European Conference for Social Work Research, Milan, Italy, 13 April 2023
Members of the research team delivered a paper at ECSWR 2023, the leading European conference in the social work research field. Our paper presented emerging thinking and findings from the first 18 months of the study, focusing in particular on the relationship between voice and data.
The presentation highlighted how voice is not fixed, but situated and relational; it may be individual or collective, formal or everyday, verbal or non-verbal. Data too are not neutral and technical but social and political. We proposed that voice and information are intrinsically and necessarily interwoven, albeit not always explicitly. That social work administrative data do not integrate well the voices of children and families is itself an expression of the voices of those who decide what counts as data, and what information should or should not be collected, collated and used. The paper argued too that the processes of gathering, recording, sharing and using children’s information are likewise social and relational. Early findings from the project highlight how information collection processes change everyday relationships of care, and that where young voices are integral to everyday practice, they become more readily embedded within information recording and use.
These insights inform our approach both to the challenge and the promise of our co-productive project: to improve the quality and the representation of children and families’ voices within and about their information, in turn to support meaning making and ethical use of information to improve their lives.
