Introduction
Social media has redefined how we are able to keep in touch with family and friends, find people and relate to others. Research has shown that social workers have been using social media, both collectively and individually, as a way to ‘collapse borders’ between social workers and service users to gain another view of their lives through monitoring of Facebook pages. While it is known that such practices go on, no research has shown how Facebook is actually used in case work with families and under what circumstances. This short video has been created to stimulate debate about the ethical issues of social media use by social work professionals. The video draws on findings from an ESRC funded research project into child protection processes in England. 

We explore these issues in detail in the following open access publication: ​The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice.
Trigger video
This short video can be used to trigger discussion about the issues this emerging practice raises.
The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: exploring complexity in an emerging practice.
Abstract
This article draws from a 15-month participant observation study of social work and child protection practices in England to illustrate how social workers used Facebook to gain another view of service-users’ lives. Social media use was not an intended focus for the study, its presence emerged during our data analysis. While some research has shown that such practices occur, our long-term ethnographic approach provides new insights into how Facebook was actually used in ongoing casework with families and why it was used. Our findings show that Facebook use took multiple forms. Some social workers actively searched service users’ Facebook pages and some opposed any such usage. We further advance the literature by introducing a third group who were unwillingly “drawn into” acting on Facebook information presented to them by others such as their managers. Our research insights suggest that social work must pause to consider the implications of these complex emerging practices.

Cooner, TS, Beddoe, L, Ferguson, H & Joy, E 2019, 'The use of Facebook in social work practice with children and families: Exploring complexity in an emerging practice', Journal of Technology in Human Services. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228835.2019.1680335
The research
To find out more about the research that these apps are based upon, please visit this site https://swcpp.weebly.com/.