Recordkeeping, logistics, and translation: a study of homeless services systems as infrastructure

Abstract

Homeless services systems provide unhoused individuals access to emergency shelter, subsidized housing, and other life-sustaining resources. In this paper, we present a qualitative study that draws on the experiences of fifteen social service workers to examine how recordkeeping practices sustain homeless services systems and unite a tangled web of institutions and actors, including public housing systems, nonprofit agencies, and local governments. We address the following research questions: How is the infrastructure of homeless services sustained by recordkeeping? How are social service workers affected by increasing recordkeeping demands? In what ways do social service workers work against or ‘find the play’ in this system? To address these questions, we collected interviews and conducted artifact walkthroughs with our study participants. We analyzed the data using an infrastructural lens and found that current recordkeeping practices within homeless services systems comprise an "infrastructure of last resort" that functions logistically, prioritizing efficiency and speed. We also found that social service workers “speak back” to logistification by making the homeless services infrastructure more legible to their unhoused clients through mediation and acts of translation that help to produce better resource outcomes. Our findings show how structuring recordkeeping in ways that privilege efficiency and speed disrupts social service work and interferes with social service workers’ ability to provide care for vulnerable individuals facing life-altering and life-threatening hardships.

Caring records: professional insights into child-centered case note recording

“…It points to the potential of further interdisciplinary collaboration between recordkeeping informatics and social work and child protection researchers and practitioners to address these challenges and progress the implementation of the rights-based and person-centered recordkeeping frameworks that have emerged in prior research (Golding et al 2021;Lomas et al 2022). With Tracey et al's recent study of how homeless services are sustained by recordkeeping, it also opens up the opportunity to explore together the design of information infrastructures that would allow recordkeeping practices to mirror the care work of practitioners by preserving and privileging the dignity and rights of children and families (Tracey et al 2023). Instead of solely focusing on efficiency and shortcuts, these approaches would allow us to better understand the lifelong needs of those involved in and impacted on by child protection case recording and explore what information systems might support child-centered case recording practice.…”

Recordkeeping Requirements for Private Health Facilities and Services: The statutory perspectives

“…Thus, record-related resources must be managed appropriately by taking into consideration legal requirements enunciated in legislation. Previous studies mainly focused on the impacts and applications of records for services, work efficiency, and organizational objectives, as indicated by Tracey et al, (2023); Farrell et al, (2023); Lawan & Henttonen (2023) ;Chandler, (2022). Huang et al, (2023); Haraldsdottir et al, (2023), on the other hand, focused on the application of certain methods and technologies on specific scenarios and during constraint and limitation (Wendelken, 2023).…”

The Strategic Role of Archives in Public Services in the Licensing Sector

“…Archives, which are often considered only as a behind-the-scenes administrative activity, turn out to have a very critical role in supporting the smoothness and speed of public services, including in the licensing sector 2022). Good archive management not only ensures that important documents are stored safely and systematically but also speeds up the process of searching and making decisions based on these documents (Tracey et al, 2023). However, there are still many public service agencies that experience difficulties in managing records properly, from storage, and management, to effective use of records.…”