Skip Navigation



BJSW Advance Access published online on December 5, 2006
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl366
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
38/3/546    most recent
bcl366v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Foster, M.
Right arrow Articles by Glendinning, C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved

Article

Practitioners’ Documentation of Assessment and Care Planning in Social Care: The Opportunities for Organizational Learning

Michele Foster 1, Jennifer Harris 1, Karen Jackson 1, and Caroline Glendinning 1 *

1 Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, York, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Caroline Glendinning, E-mail: cg20{at}york.ac.uk


  Abstract

This paper analyses practitioners’ documentation of social care assessments and care plans for disabled adults of working age. The data were collected in the course of an innovative project that introduced new outcome-focused documentation into routine social care assessment, care management and review processes. The project aimed to encourage practitioners to focus during these processes on the full range of outcomes that individual disabled adults might seek to achieve; and identify the appropriate services for realizing those outcomes. Analysis of the new documentation provides insights into the diverse range of priorities and outcomes that service users aspire to achieve as a result of receiving services, and the service inputs that were agreed between practitioners and service users. However, despite the new documentation, the majority of both outcomes and services that were recorded tended to cluster around a fairly narrow range of conventional social care service functions. Moreover, the emphasis of both outcomes and service inputs differed between different groups of social care professionals. In the context of current policies to make social care services more individualized and outcome-focused, each of these findings has major organizational implications. The opportunities for using routine practitioner documentation to identify areas of organizational and professional change and learning are discussed.

Keywords: social care, outcome-focused services, disabled adults.
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Br J Soc WorkHome page
D. Seddon, C. Robinson, Y. Tommis, B. Woods, J. Perry, and I. Russell
A Study of the Carers Strategy (2000): Supporting Carers in Wales
Br. J. Soc. Work, July 3, 2009; (2009) bcp081v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.