Data-based social work: The fragile emergence of a data-based screening technology for the foster care

Abstract

In this paper, we embark to answer a question, which is often posed by practitioners as well as by researchers: Namely, how does new technologies transform the public administration of welfare services? However, rather than focusing on “the new technology” itself, we are investigating, how the interconnectedness between the organization and the new technology brings about new work practices. With inspiration from Science and Technology Studies, we analyze how a new, databased screening-tool for social work emerges in distinct ways as results of how it is embedded in the organization. The analysis is based on qualitative data from eight local municipalities, where the screening-tool is being implementing with the purpose of supporting the foster care consultants’ judgements of how children, who are placed in foster care, are thriving and learning. The analyses shows that their ways of working with the technology unfolds in three distinct ways – an individualized, a strictly systematic, and an interdisciplinary work practice. On this basis, we propose that new technologies for databased decision-making in welfare work, should not be viewed as neutral and universal solutions, but rather as new practices, which are to be developed in close collaboration with the professionals, their workplaces, and their working conditions.