Data Recording and Social Work: From the Relational to the Social

Abstract

Social workers operate in an increasingly informational context (Parton, 2008, 2009). In this context, registration and data recording are becoming an important condition for the funding of social work organisations (Jones, 2001). In this article, we argue that the debate on data recording and social work mainly focuses on the question of whether data recording is a threat to or an opportunity for the relational aspects of social work practice. Based on an analysis of the data-recording system of victim–offender mediation for adult offenders in Flanders (Belgium), the article shows that recognising the social dimension of social work demands that social work approaches data recording not only as a way to show the activity of the social workers, but also as an instrument to reflect critically on how social work intervenes in—and therefore defines—social problems.