The Writing Series Project: A Model for Supporting Social Work Clinicians in Health Settings to Disseminate Practice Knowledge

Abstract

Social work clinicians across health care settings are uniquely positioned to disseminate valuable practice experience, thereby contributing to knowledge development within their field of practice and across disciplines. Unfortunately, practitioners tend to shy away from writing and research, and are often reluctant to publicly disseminate their expertise through peer-reviewed journals and conference presentations. To better support health social workers in scholarly endeavors, we developed and implemented The Writing Series Project in southeast Queensland, Australia. This article reports on the development, programmatic challenges and practitioner feedback that offer insight into the benefits and pitfalls that we encountered.

Social Workers Writing for Publication: The Story of a Practice and Academic Partnership

“…In busy workplaces writing can be seen as a luxury, one which may be imbued with feelings of guilt at taking 'time off' to write (Hislop, Murray and Newton, 2008). Other reported barriers, identified from a writing project in Australia, include lack of access to mentorship and training in writing skills (Boddy, Daly and Munch, 2012). Unfamiliarity with academic writing and publishing conventions have also been identified as challenges by practitioners who have seen their research through to publication (Staudt, Dulmus and Bennett., 2003).…”

“…Boddy , Daly and Munch., 2012;Joubert, Epstein and Epstein, 2013;Smith, Wilkinson and Gallagher,2013). Doel (2002, 61) has suggested that this kind of alliance of practice and academy is potentially an extremely powerful one, bringing together 'people with something to say with people with experience of conveying ideas in writing'.…”

“…, Hislop, Murray and Newton, 2008;Boddy, Daly and Munch, 2012). Some employers are perceived as seeing limited value in practitioner research, and social workers derive little benefit in financial or career terms (Croisdale-Appleby, 2014).…”

“…They work at the 'coal face' of practice in day to day involvement with the lives of service users and carers and so have a considerable contribution to make to knowledge production and exchange (Rasmussen, 2011;MacRae, Smith and Cree, 2016), both within their own profession and in the wider context of health and social care. Social work writing for publication has not been extensively researched, but the literature has consistently found that it is relatively unusual for social workers to write about their practice in ways that reach wider audiences (Staudt, Dulmus and Bennett, 2003;Boddy, Daly and Munch, 2012). This paper describes one way of addressing the dearth of published practitioner writing, by means of a collaborative project between academic researchers and practitioners in children and family social work services in the UK.…”

How practitioner-led research could have greater impact: the importance of considering knowledge mobilisation holistically

“…Mitchell et al estimate that 'practitioner research in social work probably occupies a major part of the total volume of research activity in this (social work) field ' (2010, p. 8). This literature tends focus on the learning processes which enable practitioners to gain research skills and improve their individual capacity (Beddoe and Harrington, 2012;Boddy et al, 2012;McCrystal, 2000;Bond and Walton, 1998). Capacity development might include increased ability to produce peer-reviewed writing (Boddy et al, 2012), increased research confidence (Beddoe and Harrington, 2012) and research specific skills (Lunt and Fouche, 2009).…”