You are a social worker working in a large non-government organisation as a Research Coordinator. The organisation provides health assessment and treatment for children aged 5-12.
Case Study
1) You are a social worker working in a large non-government organisation as a Research Coordinator. The organisation provides health assessment and treatment for children aged 5-12. You are working within the research team of sociologists and social workers, however the organisation is multidiscipline with Psychologists, Paediatricians, Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists and Social Workers. Most children accessing the service have 2 or more comorbidities. Many of them have mental health challenges and diagnosis. You have been tasked with a research report that will review 100 children’s files to determine if the organisation has been effective in assessing, diagnosing and treating the presenting health challenges. The research must also capture any barriers to child engagement with the service. This research will be used by management to redesign the program Service Delivery Model.
2) You are concerned that the research draws only upon a review of children’s case notes (secondary information) that have been written by practitioners and will not directly capture the voice of the children and their families. The current research design for the report will not include any primary research (such as direct client feedback in the form of focus groups and interviews with children and families). You have raised these concerns about the research design with your manager and shared that that the research design may miss important information such as the children and families’ experience of the service. The Research Department senior managers has expressed concern that adding interviews and focus groups to the research design will take more time and cost more, there is a limited budget and timeframe in which to complete this work. This senior manager Chloe, also expressed concern that by wanting to ask the service users directly, instead of reviewing the practitioners’ case notes, you were questioning the validity of the practitioners' voice.
3) This is not the case, as you are reviewing and writing up all the practitioners notes kept in the child case note folders. However, your social work ethics, values and principles, compel you to advocate for the voice of the service users to be included within the research report. Chloe has sent a prickly reply to your request to increase the scope of the research stating that “as an organisation we must uphold the voice of the practitioner and not undermine the doctors and therapists by feeling a need to go and gossip with the families – who will probably focus on trying to tell the negative side of their experience”. You realise she is concerned that negative data will skew the report and look bad to the funding body. You are going to meet with Chloe and advocate for the importance of including the voice of the service users in your research.
