The doccumentation in the daily life intrevention of social workers: some considerations concerning the field diary

Abstract

The article draws attention to the importance of documentation in the daily professional interventions and focuses on the recording of professional actions in the field diary. It is assumed that documentation is crucial in the process of data gathering and analysis, since it makes it possible to systematize the intervention developed by social workers and social work students both in order to investigate social reality, the people involved and the process of professional intervention and to find orientation for their actions when they are articulated in different intervention processes. Nonetheless, one sees that documentation as an instrument that improves the quality of professional actions is little explored by social workers. This applies particularly to the field diary, which is usually restricted to descriptions, occasional observations and mere scheduling of daily tasks. Hence the article’s insistence on the importance of analyses and/or diagnoses of the social reality and the unique demands of the people served by social workers, as this gives visibility to the forms of planning and carrying out professional actions and helps to identify limits and possibilities in the process of meeting the demands. Documentation is considered a constitutive element of professional action because it can positively influence the processes of planning and evaluation by making their execution easier. The field diary contains not only information, but may contain daily reflections that, when theoretically interpreted, foster progress both in the area of intervention and of theory.
Key words – Documentation. Field diary. Social work. Professional intervention.