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

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of responsibly integrating AI into UK social care by capturing practitioner perspectives through thirteen semi-structured interviews. It finds broadly negative experiences with technology, universal aversion to algorithmic decision systems, and a desire for non-ADS AI developed via participatory design to reduce administrative burden. Methodologically, it employs qualitative interviews to identify themes on experience, usefulness, and future development, yielding concrete recommendations for participatory design, practitioner involvement, and addressing funding and data literacy barriers. The study highlights a gap between institutional push for AI and frontline realities, offering design visions that prioritize information access, administrative relief, and care recipient involvement to improve care quality and trust in AI deployments.

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.