Summary Of Documentation In Social Work

Reamer, FG 2005, ‘Documentation in social work: evolving ethical and risk-management standards’, Social Work, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 325 – 334.

In the article Reamer describes social workers understanding of the relevance of documentation and its progress over time. Overall the author argues that documentations relevance has evolved from being primarily viewed as a mechanism to facilitate theory building, research and teaching, to being used for risk management purposes, particularly as a tool to protect clients and practitioner. Reamer states that traditionally documentation was used to assist practitioners coordinate and assess service needs and provision. He goes on to discuss the progress in the standards of documentation, the large focus

He also discusses the documentation standards held ethically - such as clients rights to view records, social workers duty to accurately document, protect and store records - and legally. Reamer finishes with addressing the risk management guidelines, presenting four categories; content documentation, language and terminology, credibility and access to documents. He argues the need for accurate and adequate information, cautiously as you are writing for an audience and following legal requirements. Reamer focuses on identifying the changes within social workers understanding of documentations relevance and discusses the progress in its importance, including accountability. The article is primarily concerned with recognising the usefulness of recording and examining the ways in which documentation has been described and structured over time. Reamer’s article is well researched using a various number of sources in support of his discussion and useful to all social workers. The strengths of this article includes; the evidence examined in support of the arguments drawn upon other experts, the layout of the

Overall, the author argues that documents serve as a means of giving social identities and social position to both children and their families, and though it is intended to help children it can be used to indorse normality in society and existing social order. Hennum states that document writing’s need for greater awareness to ethical issues can be explored through the various practices of recording. She goes on to discuss this in further detail, for example she notes that children are now entitled to voice their description or reflections of situations which would be presented in the documents. Hennum also discusses the significant role in which documentation plays in the decisions made in child protection agencies and the function of formal and informal rules in influencing the documents value. The informal rule that documentation written by professional authors has a higher status than if it were to be written by a parent, despite their right to, has heavy influence in the decisions made favouring that of the professional. Hennum continues by addressing the power of the professional in enforcing standards of normality and deviance. With each meeting between the worker and client, how the client is perceived in many cases can cause an exclusion from normalcy. This is due to the dominance of middle-class norms and values within the