Chapter four: Conclusions and recommendations

Characteristics of information behaviour

Project INISS revealed three types of characteristic in the work behaviour of social services staff that appear to be of significance for the design and development of information services in social services departments and for the improvement of information flow. These are described below.

Personal characteristics

Some personal aspects of information behaviour occurred with sufficient frequency to suggest that they may be attributed generally to people working in this field. They are also so strongly represented as to suggest that they should be taken into account by the designer of a departmental information service.

First, there is heavy reliance upon oral forms of communication in face-to-face encounters and over the telephone, both within the department and without. For example, oral forms of communication accounted for 60% of all information events and combinations of oral and written forms (e.g., making notes during a conversation or reading out parts of a document during a telephone conversation) accounted for a further 10%.

Secondly, social services staff have a 'pragmatic' orientation towards information. That is, information is seen as relevant when it relates to work interests and responsibilities. Some evidence for this statement emerged out of evaluation of the Social Work Information Bulletin in that those items most in demand (measured by requests for photocopies) dealt with topics such as the implementation of the Children Act, 1975, payment of benefits, practical aspects of therapeutic counselling, and the whole area of child abuse.

Thirdly, in those departments we have investigated, there is heavy reliance upon personal information stores, which range from memory through diaries and notebooks, to personal information files. Little attention is devoted to up-dating information systematically.

Fourthly, social services staff have a 'unitary' concept of information; that is, anything that bears upon a problem, whatever its origins, is regarded as 'information' without sub-classification into internally generated information, externally produced documents, statistics, etc. Evidence for this is found in the personal information files noted above, which often include under a subject heading of interest, such as 'Non-accidental injury', a variety of documents, including departmental statistics, articles clipped from journals and newspapers, working party reports, and hand-written notes on conferences attended.

Finally, and closely associated with the work characteristics described below, social services staff can be characterised as 'reluctant' information seekers so far as general background information is concerned (because of the pressures of day-to-day responsibilities) and as 'unskilled' information seekers when it does become necessary, because of lack of training in the use of information resources (including local departmental resources).

Work characteristics

The characteristics described above are the result of a number of factors including social work training, particularly the apprentice elements in training, and the associated characteristics of work. Probably the dominant observed characteristic of work is the highly fragmented nature of the working day. Over all subjects (from director to social worker) 36% of communication encounters lasted one minute or less and 75% lasted five minutes or less. Since this includes 'encounters' with documents as well as oral communication, it is clear that, in general, information products must be designed in such a way as to be dealt with by the recipient within the typical time allowed by his general work pattern. Not all such products can be read within five minutes but there appears to be no reason why sufficient indication cannot be provided for the member of staff to decide quickly whether an item should be reserved for later reading.

A further characteristic is the degree of participation in committees and the attendant use of committee papers, minutes and reports for communication. Project INISS has produced abundant evidence that meetings are important for information transfer and their potential as a focus for information services delivery is obvious.

Finally, work in these departments is subject to strict control of procedures to ensure that statutory requirements are observed and that expenditure on services is allocated to appropriate heads. This results in the production of procedural manuals and associated forms. These act as major media of internal communication and result in consequent problems in updating. The significance of procedural information suggests other approaches to the problem of information provision, such as issuing an index of expertize as a section of a manual, or providing information on the organization of office files and personal information files in the same way.

Organizational characteristics

Social services departments can be categorized as service bureaucracies. In these departments structures and work roles are determined by a number of factors. At top management level a division of function into what might be termed management of the services and management of the bureaucracy is typical. Thus, one finds assistant directors for fieldwork services, or for residential services in the service management sector, and assistant directors for personnel or administration in the bureaucracy management sector. Within service management, specialization according to client group is common, with specialist advisers for child care, mentally handicapped persons, and other groups. At the level of the fieldwork teams, in spite of generic training, specializations develop and some departments operate on the basis of generic teams. This variation and specialization in work roles offers scope for specialized information services.

A factor imposing further structure is the geographical dispersion of the population in need. Divisional or area management structures are found with representatives of the two broad divisions noted above within each. In the shire counties the distance between area offices and headquarters may be considerable and introduces further communication and information flow problems. Where departments have any significant library or information facilities, the effectiveness of these services may be reduced. Information service design should take this geographic problem into account.

At the upper levels of the organization, work tasks and problems are essentially managerial and administrative and committees and working parties form an important element in the work. As noted above, members of staff at most levels are likely to be involved in such meetings and, for fieldwork staff, there are service-oriented meetings such as team meetings and supervisory sessions.

Finally, responsibility for information provision in social services departments is fragmented and involves different individuals with different work roles. Such individuals range from formally designated information officers through training and research staff, public relations officers, and committee clerks, to administrative and clerical staff. In some cases there is overlap between individuals in terms of the kinds of information covered, in other cases there is a lack of coordination. Scope exists both for the introduction of some in-service training in information handling and for the establishment of coordinating mechanisms for information services provision.

Proposals

Certain categories of staff or of departmental activities (such as internal working parties) can be identified as potential targets for information services. These target groups would include: field social workers, their line managers at sector and zone levels, specialist advisers, and 'top management'. Target groups can also be identified in terms of other characteristics. For example, newcomers to a department (whether trained or not), 'isolated' staff working in sub-offices distant from both headquarters and area office, and groups which cluster according to special functions such as intermediate treatment workers.

In setting out our proposals for information services it should be stressed that we do not envisage that any department would or could implement them all. Which categories of staff or other target groups are considered most appropriate as recipients for new or developed services is a matter for the department to decide in the light of their own problem areas and priorities. Project INISS has been led to develop most of its ideas for innovations in the operational area but this does not imply that we consider organizational and managerial aspects of departments to be less important in terms of information service provision.

Senior management

Recent efforts to develop computer-based management information systems for social services departments have faltered because of inability to enlist the active cooperation of staff affected at all levels and because insufficient attention has been paid to the difficulty of ensuring that appropriate statistical data are taken into account in policy formation. For a computer-based system to influence management, someone in the senior management team must be thoroughly familiar with the methods, results and implications of any data-collection programme and capable of presenting these results persuasively to other members of the team. In the absence of such interpreters, management statistics are, at best, used to justify decisions already arrived at by other means. During the planning stage of Project INISS two senior managers were asked to recall planning decisions arrived at as a result of statistics. They did so, but in every case discussion showed the statistics performing only a subordinate, rationalizing role. Similar results were reported following a recent study in Berkshire conducted for the Department of the Environment (1976).

Thomas Holland (1976) has noted that:

"The kinds of information most often used in planning and management decisions are usually not collected in any systematic manner and are only partially quantifiable. Examples include individual values, benefits priorities, previous experience with an activity, perceived capacity and readiness of staff to move, consumer preferences, and other very elusive areas."

Observation of senior staff at work suggests that most of the requisite legislation and the government circulars which regulate the provision of social services will reach them eventually. Similarly they acquire considerable knowledge of what other departments are doing in areas which affect them and about how their own department is performing in its provision of services. Senior staff appear to be constantly on the look out for this type of information as it affects their immediate work priorities and, to a lesser extent, their areas of responsibility. Their problems appear to be largely those of digesting and acting upon the informaiton received, ensuring that their knowledge of developments on their current preoccupaiton is up to date, and that they are being sufficiently alerted about trends in their areas of work generally. An information service aimed at senior management could be expected to concentrate upon four issues:

Proposal 1A: Provision of a selective dissemination service on themes of current importance to senior management staff.

These themes are likely to change fairly frequently and regular consultation would be necessary to ensure that the types of information supplied were relevant. Emphasis would be placed upon 'soft' information, that is upon news of developments and trends rather than systematically compiled data.

Proposal 1B: Location and acquisition of specific information in narrower project areas within the range of current interests of specific members of senior management.

Such a service would have to be supplied to order and its use would depend on the information officer establishing a personal relationship with senior staff which would enable him to demonstrate his skills. It is probable that this area of work has the biggest long-term potential in that if successful the information unit would come to be an integral part of the policy creating section of the department. Observation evidence suggests that senior staff will not themselves systematically perform such a role.

Proposal 1C: Provision of a low-key but systematic current awareness service of developments outside the department in the broader area of each senior manager's responsibility.

Most of the information sections visited have either not attempted to fulfil any of these three functions for top management or have concentrated upon not very systematic work in this area. Part of the effectiveness of this type of service depends upon its being seen by recipients to be systematic.

Proposal 1D: Collection and dissemination of internal performance information or comparative performance information.

Where the information officer might well be of use is in gathering suitable comparative performance information from other departments and in helping to identify and overcome weaknesses in the management data gathering services of the home department. This latter task would depend upon the role envisaged for the information officer and the attitude towards the incumbent held by senior staff in line management positions.

Improvements in the collection of these types of information are long overdue. A Social Work Service Development Group (1975) report claimed that:

"It would be difficult for many directors of social services to state how many people in a year have asked their departments for help, who referred them, why they came, and whether or not they were known to other agencies who might have relevant information about them. Even where such information is collected, reliable and up-to-date, a director cannot compare his situation with other local authorities, since information other than national statistics is not generally assembled in comparable form either between local authorities or even, sometimes, within parts of the same local authority."

In offering these proposals for consideration we are conscious that the present incumbents of most information officer posts in departments valid not, for a number of reasons, including their internal status and attitudes towards their work, be able to provide these services. Effective information services to departmental senior managers can only be provided by relatively senior staff in a new role.

Professional staff

Departments employ a range of research, training and planning staff who have potentially important information roles which could be furthered by providing suitable information support services. The skills of the trained librarian in obtaining, classifying, collating and disseminating written and published material are particularly important here. Since many of the demands made upon specialist staff involve a comparatively short period of preparation time, only the material ready to hand is likely to be called upon. During observation a research officer was asked to estimate the cost of performing various tasks as part of the supporting evidence for a research proposal:

Obtaining time costing standards information

S = subject; M = research worker; A = social worker who initiated the proposa1.

It is notable that although considerable efforts were being expended in this case, they did not extend to making any kind of thorough search for comparable information from other departments, beyond looking at the section collection of reports from other departments. The subject made a passing comment that "comparative costings of different methods of care are very difficult", suggesting that previous attention had been paid to this type of problem. A potential role for a librarian/information officer in cases such as this one, to reduce the necessity of searching beyond the department as issues arise by assembling a more extensive collection of reports and publications, seems fairly clear.

Headquarters-based professional staff offer a ready-made client group for an effectively-developed library service. It must be clear, however, that such a service would need to be developed in close cooperation with the potential users and that the librarian would need to build up a much 'closer understanding of the work of his users and the constraints under which this work is performed than is customarily the case. A relatively small, carefully selected and constantly weeded stock would be essential and would need to include as much relevant, 'unpublished' information from other departments as could be obtained. To support the kinds of information service suggested under 1A to ID above a cuttings file of current 'news' items would be a useful component of the library service. Above all, the development of cooperative links with other agencies would be of crucial importance.

Proposal 2: Development of a properly staffed and organized research library, primarily for use by research, planning and training staff, but a potential focal point for all enquiries from department staff relating to externally published information. (See also proposal 10 below)

Advisory staff

Whether advisory staff are seen as an attempt to maintain 'pre-Seehohm' expertize in the provision of services for particular client groups, as advisers to senior management or as a support service for fieldworkers, they appear to have a potentially important information role. This role is limited by at least five factors:

1. the non-line management position of many such staff which results in their being by-passed when some types of information are transmitted through the formal conmunications system;
2. lack of understanding of their role on the part of line managers (leading to suspicion if they attempt to intervene in zones or sectors) and field workers (leading to unreliable expectations of their ability to provide information particularly on resources) and ambiguity in the interpretation of this role by the advisers themselves;
3. the huge number of potential calls upon their services. All generic social workers and many other staff may be looked upon as potential contacts for advisers unless organizational constraints prevent them from being contacted freely, or unless an organization-wide 'consulting' service (which includes unofficial as well as official advisers) helps to spread the load.
4. their involvement as departmental or zone representatives at a variety of external meetings, together with their internal meetings obligations. Although advisers may perform important information dissemination functions in these meetings, their value as general contact points is diminished by their meeting obligations;
5. geographical locations of advisers at headquarters (or zone headquarters) which makes contact from the field somewhat problematical.

One possible role for an information officer in a department is as a 'go-between' or contact point, so that staff needing advice can be steered to the most appropriate contact ('official' advisers or otherwise) and enquiries can be conveyed to advisers if they prove to be elusive. It may be argued that this approach downgrades the information officer to the level of message-taker, but sensitive vetting of enquiries should enable him to steer people towards a range of appropriate sources and to free the advisers to perform their role more adequately. One other objection might be that since the majority of information staff in departments are employed in research sections (Streatfield, 1978) problems of accountability would arise. These might be overcome by incorporating the information unit within a reconstituted advisory section which might also encompass the research section.

Advisers seem to be amongst the obvious candidates within any department for a selective dissemination of information service covering documentation on whatever they see as important aspects of their subject fields, or service provision generally. The types of information likely to be of interest include both 'technical' information on methods or the implications of statutory obligations, for example, and more general 'soft' information including news of developments in their fields in the form of research reports, case studies and staff movements announcements.

Proposal 3: Employment of information staff as referral points on behalf of advisers, perhaps within an advisory section of the department.

Proposal 4: Provision of selective dissemination of information services for advisers, covering both published material and reports drawn from outside the department. (See also Proposal 6 below)

Line managers

A sector director described how he handled incoming information:

"So many communications are coming into the area; I have to identify priorities. How to go about it is difficult, directly or through meetings or groups of senior social workers - these are the options."

Interviewer: "How would you normally go about it?"

"If I wanted immediate feedback I would send it to the area staff meeting. If it's a management issue to the area management to marshall our thoughts before bringing it to the area [staff meeting]. Or ask senior social workers to get an exchange of views or information across at a sub-team meeting. It depends on the issue, I use a rule of thumb."

Of eleven line managers interviewed four claimed that in general they got too much information and another four gave more complex replies which would be summarized as "too much irrelevant, not enough relevant information." Elaboration included:

"There's too much standard bumph, for example Parliamentary stuff, voluntary organization leaflets, application forms [for jobs] etc. I send it to people who should make the most use of it ..."

The position of line managers at the apex of their local organizational pyramids, serving as channels through which much of the communication passes to and from their areas, is strikingly similar to that of the director described earlier who said that:

"One of my major jobs is making sure that the paper goes to the right person who is working on it and also that different sections of the department have got the information or document they require ... a lot of my responsibility is deciding the route."

Transmission of written forms of communication down from headquarters to zones and sectors appeared to be more or less haphazard although it was to some extent dictated by the demands of the management committee cycle. This could be particularly frustrating if the recipients were not aware of the context. One new sector director described how he had just discovered the department's programme of work giving committee deadlines etc. In the past, demands for certain kinds of information had come to him 'out of the blue' and he had no way of relating these demands to any work programme.

A limited amount could be done in most departments to simplify the downward flow of written forms of communication by:

1. preparing overall work programmes for line management use and relating specific documents and/or requests for information to these programmes by marking them with a standard code;
2. making allowance for delays occasioned by the percolation of mail through the system when setting deadlines for returns;
3. identifying particular documents as supplied for information only, for potential distribution to named categories of subordinates (supplying sufficient copies for this purpose) or tor other purposes envisaged with the interests of line managers in mind;
4. identifying the source and date of all documents supplied;
5. for committee papers, indicating prominantly the specific meeting at which the paper is to be considered.

A headquarters-based information officer might be able to encourage the introduction of measures of the kind outlined and ensure that these practices were usually followed. Scope for provision of other services to line managers will depend upon the particular needs and attitudes of individuals.

Proposal 5A: Information staff should take responsibility for ensuring some measure of control over written forms of information flowing down to zones and sectors by seeking the implementation of good practices (such as those outlined in a) to e) above) and by encouraging their widespread adoption.

As already noted sector and zone directors are primarily concerned with man management but are unlikely to find time to read general publications on personnel management or accounts of social services staff management experiences.

Proposal 5B: Summaries of significant findings and developments in personnel management, particularly those relating to social work, should be prepared and circulated to department line managers. This service should be reviewed and modified at regular intervals.

Proposal 5C: Provision of in-service training courses for zone and sector directors covering developments in staff management might be considered by training staff. Information staff might well be involved with the training section in compiling the basic course information and reacting to information needs identified during courses.

Operational level staff

Most of the proposals developed by Project INISS are focused upon the operational level of departments and refer particularly to social workers. The particular focus of each proposal is indicated below.

New staff, particularly social workers

There is fairly general acceptance, supported by observation, that extensive 'reconditioning' of newly trained social workers takes place at the elbows of more senior colleagues. Part of this process involves identifying valuable contacts.

Generic social work practice results in demand for information about a range of services for a variety of client groups. The types of information required include descriptions of counselling methods, information on resources and benefits available and on problems relating to the provision of specific client services, such as the legal interpretation of statutory obligations.' Apart from advisory and specialist staff, departments contain a volume of expertize acquired through training, job experience and individual interests and involvement both within and outside the department, which could be harnessed.

Proposal 6A: A regular bulletin service containing summaries of published items on topics identified as relevant to social workers should be developed. (See also Proposal 11).

Proposal 6B: An organization-wide consulting service based upon an index to sources of specialist personal knowledge would be established by group interviews, questionnaires and other means. Although the concept of an index of expertize was developed primarily with the needs of new staff in mind, it would have obvious potential value to all staff. The index might take the form of a single file of cards, sector office files or a duplicated directory and could be prepared through an information unit. This innovation is being explored in the current phase of Project INISS.

Isolated fieldworkers

In geographically dispersed departments such as those serving non-metropolitan counties, social services staff may have no ready access to current monograph material. The innovation proposed would involve the public libraries department in regularly providing material to an area office.

Proposal 7: Collections of recent monographs in the broad area of social service interests should be placed in area offices. The support of the public libraries department in providing and maintaining the service could be sought since there are precedents for similar types of service provision in schools, hospitals, prisons etc. Variations on this idea are being tested in two departments as part of the current project programme.

Fieldwork teams

Project INISS research has shown that social workers experience difficulty in obtaining certain kinds of information. In particular, they instanced difficulties with DHSS leaflets, legal documentation, information on possible side-effects of medication and information on the resources and objectives of local voluntary organizations. These difficulties may lead to the development of personal information stores which are sometimes seen as necessary because of the lack of an 'official' system.

Proposal 8: An attempt should be made to rationalize the processes of acquiring and storing documentary information in team offices, by the preparation of standard information packs or by developing an information collection guide for use by administrative support staff or social workers. Information officers might well take a lead in developing and implementing such services. Two social work teams are now helping project staff to elaborate and test this idea.

Field-based workers

Both social workers and administrative staff appear to be relatively uninformed about information sources and the organization and control of information systems.

Proposal 9) One or more courses in information handling should be mounted for social workers and administrative support staff to include the following topics:

1. departmental communications and information flow and existing information resources (e.g., training library, information role of research officers and publicity section, information officer, etc);
2. directories and other ready reference sources: their availability and use (including specialist directories prepared by the authority or the department);
3. the creation and maintenance of personal and team information files;
4. dissemination procedures for journals, articles, circulars, leaflets, etc;
5. minutes of meetings: effective presentation, tagging and distribution.