Study title

This data collection is a part of the data from the study 'Becoming agile in local authority children's safeguarding social work services'. It features transcripts of of 41 interviews, conducted with 7 social work practitioners, who each took part in between 4 and 8 interviews, over the course of 6-12 months. Interviews explored practitioners' everyday working practices, interactions with other practitioners, supervisors, and parents and children who used services, and practitioners' experiences of their work. The interviews in this collection happened between March 2021 and July 2022, and includes practitioners describing their practice in the context of social distancing because of Covid restrictions, and later periods where social workers were working using a hybrid of co-present and remote interactions with other practitioners and people who used services. These participants were part of a group of 21 practitioners: other practitioners did not give consent for their data to be shared.Since 2010, agile approaches have been implemented increasingly enthusiastically by local authorities and the NHS in the UK. ‘Agile’ means approaches that are designed to enable simpler, more flexible organisational systems and working practices, which respond more directly to the needs of people using services. Changes include moving services online and providing employees with access to digital technologies that enable them to work more remotely and flexibly. In children’s safeguarding social work, agile approaches have led to new working practices such as remote working and increased communication between colleagues via digital information systems. Earlier research suggested that while social workers often welcomed greater flexibility about where and when they could work, agile approaches also produced new challenges in keeping information secure and maintaining working relationships with colleagues. This project aimed to: Document how service leaders, supervisors,...