EXPLORING THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF USING TECHNOLOGY AS A SERVICE DELIVERY TOOL IN SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE

Over the past decades, technology has highly evolved in social work practice playing a part in providing practitioners easy and quick access to their clients and colleagues through online messaging, chat rooms, cell phones, email, and fax (Finne, 2019). In a social work context, therapeutic uses of technology are diverse, including text messaging, email, videoconferencing with a social worker, electronic social networks, virtual reality software, self-directed web-centred interventions, and counselling (Finne, 2019). Consumers understand an extensive array of choices and connected benefits to acquiring services via ubiquitous technologies irrespective of therapist preferences and agency policy. Recently, attempts have been made to harness and stress the internet power to offer continuous professional learning and distribution of evidence-centred findings for social workers and practitioners.

The change towards a technological steered practice has become so significant that in 2005, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) joined forces with the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) to establish standards for ethically mixing technology into social work services (Finne, 2019). These principles addressed ethical concerns such as research evidence regarding the impact and effectiveness of distant services, documentation, competence, confidentiality, and client privacy. The relation between ethics, social justice and human rights is central to its international meaning and involvement in decision making. Human Rights are about securing the interests of groups of people. Ethics on the other hand are about conducting and making choices about how to implement social justice. In this way, a social worker faces social problems. The prevalence of social inequality everywhere in the world offers grounds for neglect and violation of human rights. (BASW,2019).

The complexity of the relationship between social workers and technology provides social workers with challenges of preserving integrity and dignity in technology. Using the Internet and associated technology will draw the attention of human rights and can become a tool in human rights abuses. (BASW, 2019) Currently, there is rising pressure on social work agencies to generate “outcomes,” and frequently, agency computer information systems are connected with forces to do so as practitioners attempt to offer efficient and effective services to clienteles (McInroy, 2019). Despite the rising client demand for utilising technology in therapeutic approaches, the social work field persists in questioning the suitability of technology-centred interventions as a direct practice methodology (Drumm, McCoy, and Lemon, 2003).

Ample conceptual debates have risen concerning risks and benefits connected with embracing technology to facilitate or deliver social work service interventions.