As reported in Community Care recently another professional has been reprimanded for ‘inappropriate’ use of Facebook.
The report notes that a social worker has been given a 12-month conditions of practice order by the regulatory body, the HCPC, after posting comments on Facebook about a child protection court case.
The case has generated a lot of debate about the rights or wrongs of the actions of the social worker and the rights or wrongs of the judgement and the sanctions. The comments beneath the Community care article illustrate a wide range of polarised views and a clear lack of a shared sense of what is or is not appropriate.
There is a suggestion that the HCPC , when considering fitness to practice issues have only occasionally had to consider the use of social media. I know from my own conversations with them that , whilst the proportion of the total fitness to practice hearings which feature social media remains relatively low, it is increasing year on year.
The issues are similar across many professions. In 2011, when writing our book, Social Work in a Digital Society, we wrote that ‘ at the time of writing further evidence has emerged that even experienced professionals are not thinking carefully enough about their use of social media’. This was in a week when two teachers had been suspended for making inappropriate comments about pupils on facebook. By 2012 it was reported that one in ten cases of misconduct reported to the general teaching council involved staff forming inappropriate relationships with pupils via social media. Some schools now ban their teaching staff from having facebook accounts at all.
We may think that trained professionals should know better, but there continues to be a lack of consideration of the issues in professional training programmes,despite the issues being real and present potential dangers in daily practice.
It has also been suggested that there has not been enough guidance from professional bodies on the issues and that they have failed to keep up with the march of technology.
In relation to social work BASW, the British Association of Social Workers has produced useful guidance.One of the dangers of the headlines about ‘misconduct’ is that they will sensitise people only to the perceived ‘dangers’ of social media and thus overlook the range of ethical, creative, and helpful uses of such media. The BASW guidelines do remind us of the potential of new media, and how they may help to facilitate social work practice and values.
” The use of social technology and social networking enables people to collaborate, buildrelationships and share information and resources.Proactive engagement in social media can provide “a facilitative platform for achieving social work’s main objectives of greater equity and enhanced social justice and … an opportunity for challenging power imbalances and exclusion imposed by structural hierarchies. It can reclaim power through creation of new spaces for dialogue and a more dynamic social interaction.” – http://cdn.basw.co.uk/upload/basw_34634-1.pdf
Yes. We need to tread carefully when switching on to any social media and be aware of a number of potential pitfalls. – Digital footprints are permanent; the owner of the digital media probably owns and controls any data you place there; your privacy settings may not be as you think; more people than you expect may view items that you post, and identification of personal information may be easier than you think, so think very very carefully about confidentiality.
Yes, also, that social media can be incredibly useful for sharing, learning, building and creating new spaces for exploring ideas and information.
Whatever our individual views about social media, trying to prevent their use would be as useless as trying to stop the tide with a mop. In our unversity environments most students now join facebook groups as vehicles for discussing their courses and modules (and their tutors). Thoughtful tutors are using facebook as a teaching tool ,both to illustrate relevant digital issues , but also to familiarise all students with the potential and potential dangers of it’s use. – see http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/44/4/1063.full.pdf