Reimagining AI in Social Work: Practitioner Perspectives on Incorporating Technology in their Practice

TL;DR

This paper explores UK social work practitioners' perspectives on AI, highlighting their negative experiences with past systems, aversion to algorithms, and interest in AI that reduces administrative burden, with recommendations for participatory design and trust rebuilding.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into practitioners' views on AI in social care and offers concrete recommendations for future development and implementation.

Findings

Practitioners had overwhelmingly negative past experiences with technology.

There is strong aversion to algorithmic decision systems.

Practitioners are interested in AI that reduces administrative workload.

Abstract

There has been a surge in the number and type of AI tools being tested and deployed within both national and local government in the UK, including within the social care sector. Given the many ongoing and planned future developments, the time is ripe to review and reflect on the state of AI in social care. We do so by conducting semi-structured interviews with UK-based social work professionals about their experiences and opinions of past and current AI systems. Our aim is to understand what systems would practitioners like to see developed and how. We find that all our interviewees had overwhelmingly negative past experiences of technology in social care, unanimous aversion to algorithmic decision systems in particular, but also strong interest in AI applications that could allow them to spend less time on administrative tasks. In response to our findings, we offer a series of concrete recommendations, which include commitment to participatory design, as well as the necessity of regaining practitioner trust.