Trauma-Informed Social Work Practice: What Is It and Why Should We Care?

Over the last 20 years there has been increasing recognition of the role that psychological trauma plays in a wide range of health, mental health and social problems. When people think of trauma, they think about experiences like war and the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. But the reality is that trauma includes a wide range of situations where people are physically threatened, hurt or violated, or when they witness others in these situations. This includes such experiences as childhood physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, witnessing domestic violence, serious accidents, natural disasters, physical torture, riots, shootings, knifings, being threatened with a weapon, combat, house fire, life-threatening illness, and death of someone close, especially sudden death.

Although, there have been no comprehensive studies of the prevalence of exposure to traumatic events, studies conducted in the United States suggest that exposure to traumatic events occurs in at least 50%-60% of the U.S. population, and rates in clinical settings run much higher (Kessler, 2000); Kessler notes that given that the U.S. has higher crime rates than other developed countries, it may be that these rates are significantly higher in the U.S. than in other developed nations. However, problems like child abuse and domestic violence are challenges faced by almost all the societies on our planet, and natural disasters certainly affect everyone, regardless of national origin.

The impact of living through traumatic events, especially multiple events over the course of a lifetime, can result in a range of behavioral health problems other than post-traumatic stress disorder, including substance abuse, depression, anxiety problems, childhood behavioral disorders, psychosis, and some personality disorder diagnoses (National Trauma Consortium, 2012). Some psychiatrists have suggested that the entire medical model of mental illness needs to be reevaluated in light of the recognition of the role of trauma (e.g. see Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. Colin Ross’s book The Trauma Model)– this is not to say that biology doesn’t play a role in behavioral health problems, only that it doesn’t, by itself, cause them in most circumstances.

The reality is that social workers have been working with trauma survivors from the first day our profession began. However, the growing knowledge base about how trauma affects people is now being used to inform changes in policy and practice to ensure that we support recovery and don’t inadvertently hurt people. Simply stated, trauma-informed practice is policy and practice based on what we know from research about the prevalence of trauma and about how affects people. Within the U.S., trauma-informed practice is usually referred to as Trauma-Informed Care (TIC), a term that is used in national policy efforts initiated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

What Does Trauma-Informed Practice Actually Look Like?

Trauma-informed practice incorporates assessment of trauma and trauma symptoms into all routine practice; it also ensures that clients have access to trauma-focused interventions, that is, interventions that treat the consequences of traumatic stress. A trauma-informed perspective asks clients not “What is wrong with you?” but instead, “What happened to you?” However, trauma-informed practice also focuses our attention on the ways in which services are delivered and service systems are organized (Bloom & Farragher, 2011). Recognizing that traumatic events made people feel unsafe and powerless, trauma-informed practice seeks to create programs where clients and staff feel safe and empowered. Generally, trauma-informed practice is organized around the principles of safety/trustworthiness, choice/collaboration/empowerment, and a strengths-based approach (Hopper, Bassuk, & Olivet, 2010).

Trauma-informed organizations ensure that every staff member, from the receptionist to the executive director, understands trauma and trauma reactions. Trauma-informed organizations routinely examine all policies, procedures and processes to ensure they are not likely to trigger trauma reactions or to be experienced as re-traumatizing, that is, putting a client through a process that shares characteristics of the traumas they have lived through. For example, within psychiatric hospitals restraints have long been used for patients who are out of control in some way. However, for a person who has lived through abuse, restraint may well have been associated with being hurt physically or with being sexually abused. Restraints therefore have a high potential to actually re-traumatize a client and trigger more psychiatric symptoms. A trauma–informed perspective recognizes the damaging impact of restraints and focuses on incorporation of psychiatric advanced directives into mental health care. This is just one example of a practice within mental health that can be hurtful to trauma-survivors. For more examples of how our efforts to help can inadvertently hurt people, read the heart-wrenching case study, On Being Invisible in the Mental Health System, that describes the devastating impact of the mental health system on one young woman’s life and provides a compelling example of how our systems can fail trauma survivors.

Why Should We Care?

Each of us chose social work because we want to make a positive difference in the world. Some of us can see clearly where our work has this contribution. Many of us struggle to “do good” within service systems that are broken–we know at a basic level that something is very wrong, even if we manage to bring about positive outcomes much of the time. The systems within which many social workers are employed are often based on principles that are not only not trauma-informed, but instead, reinforce damaging messages to both staff and clients, such as “your voice doesn’t matter here.” Bloom and Farragher (2011) in their book Destroying Sanctuary, have written eloquently about the current crisis facing our human services delivery systems and how the impact of our systems often is the opposite of creating safe and growth-promoting environments, both for clients and staff. While it may not be the only lens that can be helpful in addressing this crisis, a trauma-informed perspective shines a clear light on what’s broken, what needs to change, and what will work instead. It focuses us not only on our direct practice, but on organizations, service systems, and ultimately our paradigms for understanding the work we are doing and the work we would like to do–in other words, it’s a true social work perspective. The paradigm fits well with the values of our profession, it draws attention to all that we know about a systems perspective, and it incorporates a holistic, biopsychosocial perspective on human beings.

It’s because of all of the above reasons that our faculty chose to incorporate a trauma-informed perspective (along with a human rights perspective) into all aspects of our masters in social work program. We feel that this perspective is a missing piece in social work education and that having it will make a difference in our graduates being able to practice effectively at all levels of social work practice, especially in their ability to bring about needed transformations in our service systems. Beyond the growing body of research that I’ve mentioned, part of what brought our faculty to this understanding was the feedback we were receiving from clients and agencies within our own community, Western New York, about the power of this perspective after years of incorporating it into our School’s continuing education programs. Agency directors were becoming increasingly interested in seeking out trauma trainings for everyone in their agencies because of the transformational impact they were seeing with clients and the workforce. One after another, social workers and other human services professionals were describing this as “the missing piece” in their knowledge base and that having this knowledge made a difference in their practice.

Many social workers feel disempowered within the systems in which they work: trauma-informed practice is a framework of system and practice transformation that can provide us with a blueprint for empowerment for ourselves as well as for our clients. I hope I’ve piqued your interest in this concept enough that you’ll consider learning more about it.

Where Can I Learn More About Trauma-Informed Practice?

Many of the resources cited in this post are good places to start to learn more about trauma-informed practice. In addition, try checking out the following:

• Podcast interview (part 1) with Brian Farragher: The Sanctuary Model: Changing the Culture of Care – It Begins with Me (part 1 of 2) Episode #77 of the Living Proof Podcast Series
• Podcast interview (part 2) with Brian Farragher: The Sanctuary Model: Changing the Culture of Care – Transforming Human Services (part 2 of 2) Episode #77 of the Living Proof Podcast Series
• Podcast interview with Dr. Sandra Bloom: The Sanctuary Model: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Treatment and Services, Episode #10 of the Living Proof Podcast Series [note, I recommend listening to this after listening to the Farragher interviews]
• Videos from a conference on trauma and trauma-informed care, including talks from two national presenters, Dr. Sandra Bloom (Sanctuary Model) and Dr. Robert Anda (ACE study)–videos included are Trauma 101, the ACE study, and an overview of the Sanctuary Model, one model of trauma-informed care.
• Creating Cultures of Trauma-Informed Care (CCTIC): A Self-Assessment and Planning Protocol (pdf) by Roger D. Fallot and Maxine Harris, April 2009.
• Power & Social Media: Thoughts for Therapists Working with Trauma Survivors by Nancy J. Smyth, February 18, 2011,
• The book Trauma-informed practices with children and adolescents (2011) by William Steele and Cathy A. Malchiodi. London, Routledge.
• Innovations in Implementation of Trauma-Informed Care Practices in Youth Residential Treatment: A Curriculum for Organizational Change (pdf) by Victoria Latham Hummer, Norín Dollard, John Robst, and Mary I. Armstrong.  (article from Child Welfare)
• Podcast I did for World Social Work Day: Trauma-Informed Social Work Practice: What Is It and Why Should We Care? (March 2012).
• Online Trauma-Informed Clinical Foundation Certificate Program through our  Continuing Education department (University at Bufalo School of Social Work)

Reference Citations

Bloom, S. L., & Farragher, B. (2011). Destroying sanctuary: the crisis in human services delivery systems. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jennings, A. (1994). On being invisible in the mental health system. Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research, 21(4), 374-387. Available online at: http://www.theannainstitute.org/obi.html or http://www.theannainstitute.org/OBI.pdf

Kessler, R.C. (2000). Posttraumatic stress disorder: The burden to the individual and to society. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 61(supplement 5), 4-12.

National Child Traumatic Stress Network (2012). http://www.nctsnet.org/ retrieved March 17, 2012

National Trauma Consortium (2012).  http://www.nationaltraumaconsortium.org/ retrieved March 17, 2012.

Ross, C.A. (2011). The trauma model: A solution to the problem of comorbidity in psychiatry (Kindle Edition). Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2012). National Center for Trauma-Informed Care. http://www.samhsa.gov/nctic/ retrieved March 17, 2012.

This post is cross-posted from my post on SWSCMedia blog.

Photo is provided courtesy of SashaW on Flickr

Extending Your Professional Consultation Network with Social Media: How It Saved a Life

A while back I wrote about why I’m here, that is, why I use social media. In that post, I talked primarily about the value of hearing from a broad network of people about ideas that are outside my discipline. Well today I read about a university colleague who used Twitter another way, to seek fast consultation from colleagues around the globe. It’s a wonderful story–here’s an excerpt:

Is It Time To Get on Twitter?

By Christina Frangou

Chicago—Late one night in 2011, University of Buffalo pediatric surgeon Philip Glick, MD, received a call from his resident on call, telling him that a child who had been on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for several days, now had air tracking back through the venous cannula.

Dr. Glick, a professor of surgery, pediatrics, OB/GYN and management, rushed to the pediatric ICU and his team gathered around the child’s bed. Everyone was baffled; no one, including Dr. Glick, had seen anything like it. The only option he could come up with was to turn off the ventilator, as the child also was on heart-lung bypass support.

“It was 4:30 in the morning,” he said, recounting the story during a session of the 2012 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). “The sun was about to come up. I was very tired. I called the ECMO hotline; no explanation. I did a PubMed search; nothing published. Lastly, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone in the universe had had a patient with pertussis on ECMO who had what I was describing as a pulmonary bronchial pulmonary artery fistula.”

When Dr. Glick woke up a few hours later, he’d received an answer from a surgeon from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “He had a series of patients, yet to be published, with pertussis who had similar experiences and he said ‘what you may have is a patient with a totally necrotic lung.’”

That is a real-life example of how Twitter can help surgeons access information not readily available from traditional sources, Dr. Glick said. “This surgeon hadn’t even published this information yet. He knew exactly what was wrong, exactly what I should do and I shared it with my patient and [the child’s] family who needed it.”

via General Surgery News – Is It Time To Get on Twitter?

What a wonderful example of the value of using Twitter for a Professional Consultation Network (PCN).  And it made me proud to be at the same university with a physician who used social media this way.  I would love to tell you that there are many faculty here at the University at Buffalo who use Twitter professionally, but it’s simply not the case. How fortunate that this child had Dr. Glick — a globally-connected surgeon — as his doctor.

I would love to hear some other examples of  times that you have used Twitter (or some other form of social media) as your PCN. I think our collective examples might provide a great rationale to colleagues about the value of this medium in our professional lives.

Photo, Global Network, courtesy of fedcomite

Virtual Worlds: Portals to Our Self-Discovery?

I came across this story recently, and it got me thinking about how little we understand about the power of our minds and our imaginations. And it reminded me of why I love virtual worlds: because they provide opportunities for us to glimpse the power of our minds to shape reality–both virtual and physical reality.

Here’s the story:

From New World Notes: Woman with Parkinson’s Reports Significant Physical Recovery After Using Second Life

This is Fran, an 85 year old woman who plays Second Life as an avatar named Fran Seranade, and while that’s interesting in itself, many other senior citizens like her are known to be active in SL. Here is the truly extraordinary thing: For over 7 years, Fran has been afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system afflicting millions around the world, including actor Michael J. Fox and sports legend Muhammed Ali. In Fran’s case, Parkinson’s has made it difficult for her to stand from a sitting position, and maintain her balance while upright. But now Fran reports she’s gained significant recovery of physical movement — as a direct consequence of her activity in Second Life.

How did this happen? According to her, she originally used Second Life just as a fun way to socialize, but “[a]fter awhile I began to identify with my avatar and feel like I was actually doing what she was doing.” On one occasion, she played with some tai chi meditation animations for her avatar (that’s her below), and this was a turning point:

“As I watched her,” as she tells me through e-mail, “I could actually feel the movements within my body as if I were actually doing tai chi in my physical life (which is not possible for me).” She made this avatar-based tai chi a daily routine while meditating, and then sensed it was having an impact on herself:

“For a year I have sat and slept in a motorized lounge chair that brings me to a standing position when I push a button.” After weeks of watching her avatar practice tai chi, however, “I could feel that my body had become stronger.” Until a day came where she was able to stand without motorized assistance. “Now,” she says, “I can go from a sitting to standing position without even using my arms to push against the arm rests. This has been absolutely thrilling for me.”

via New World Notes: Woman with Parkinson’s Reports Significant Physical Recovery After Using Second Life – Academics Researching (Read more at that link).

The next time someone tells me that the digital isn’t real,  I will respond, “Really? Are you sure? How do we know?” And I will tell this story.

Like this post? Check out my other posts on virtual worlds

Health Info & Social Networks: Some Unexpected News

I’ve read quite a bit the last couple of years about battle for the search market: how Facebook is challenging Google in online search  because people want to search within their own social networks (e.g. Facebook vs. Google: It’s On in Search, How Facebook Could Beat Google to Win the Net , and Wired’s Facebook vs. Google). So I was more than a little surprised to read some recent findings about health information search by the Pew Internet team in their new report, Health Online 2013. Beyond their main findings (59% of adults in the United States have looked online for health information in the past year), they found that people don’t start their search for health information with their social networks.

Where Do People Look Online for Health Information?

• Not on Facebook or on another social network site. Only 1% reported starting in those places.
• Most (77%) began with search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.
• Specialized sites like WebMD were the starting place for 13%
• Only a small percentage (2%) start at general reference sites like Wikipedia

At a time when we’re told how much people rely on their social networks for information, it’s striking that people don’t start their health information search in those places.

Why Don’t People Start with Their Social Networks?

One reason might be that people recognize the need for more specialized information, and that they don’t see their social networks possessing that information. Another could be that they feel some embarrassment about the potential medical issue and aren’t interested in sharing with others during their information-seeking. When I think about the clients that I’ve worked with over the years who were struggling with health problems, as well as my own struggles, I recall that there are few things more frustrating than trying to describe the experience of having a particular health condition to those who don’t have it. At best, one is left feeling like you’re speaking different languages. At the worst, one receives a barrage of unsolicited, often irrelevant advice.

But it’s Not That People Aren’t Social About Health

While people don’t start searching in their social networks, social is an important part of health online for some people. For example, the Pew Project reports that:

• 25% report reading or watching other people’s experiences with a medical condition.
• 16% looked for peers, that is, other who struggling with the same health problem.

So some people are looking to make social connections around health-related issues. They’re just looking to establish connections with people who would understand the particular challenges associated with a specific health condition.

The Pew data suggest that people don’t blindly reach out to their social networks for information on everything. Instead, they seem to be assessing what relevance their network might have for the task at hand. That’s really not that surprising when you think of it that way. It makes me wonder: what other topics would lead  people  to bypass their social  networks?

What’s Ahead for Social Work This Coming Year?

Welcoming in a new year always brings a chance to consider what might be up ahead. Given who I am, many (but not all) of my predictions relate to social work and technology. This is not to suggest that these are the only notable trends for this year, only that this is what I’m noticing and thinking about.

Predictions: What 2013 Will Bring for Social Work

1. More and more social workers exploring how to use the Internet as a way to connect, and more and more non-profits figuring out they need to learn how to leverage the Internet. This trend began accelerating last year with the advent of more social work chats on Twitter (in part, because of the great work from @SWSCMedia). I think we’ll continue seeing more colleagues using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn professionally this year. And with the start of Google+ Communities I think we’ll see more social workers using them to connect. We already have one thriving community there, started by Jonathan Singer (of the Social Work Podcast fame), called Social Work and Technology. Nonprofits who are looking for some guidance in this world would do well to look at the work of Beth Kanter , including her two books on the topic: The Networked NonProfit, and Measuring the Networked NonProfit, both of which are available on Amazon.

2. A continuation of the trend of reduced funding for nonprofits, governmental, and other social care agencies (because of economic downturns, see State Mental Health Cuts: The Continuing Crisis), as well as the restructuring of systems of care based on significant policy shifts (e.g., see #6 below). Both of these forces will result in more reorganizations, downsizings, mergers and closures. While it may be turning around in some places (depending on which indicators one follows), from my vantage point it looks like it will be a while for any recovery to fully hit the social sector. This doesn’t mean there won’t be jobs, only that there will be senior people who find themselves unexpectedly out on the job market and that the job-seeking environment will be a competitive one. Most new social workers I know are finding jobs within about 3-4 months of seeking employment.

3. Continued emphasis on increased accountability for social work, social care and human services agencies. The world at large has been placing more and more attention on the use of data–e.g., “big data” and “business intelligence“–to understand the world and to guide how we make decisions. I think we will see more non-profits begin to jump in and show that they understand the importance of this trend, both to show their impact and use data-based decision-making to guide their work.

4. Reduced governmental funding, at least in the Western world, for social research. This simply is a function of the challenging economic environment and the lower priority that most governments place on this as a priority when funds get tight.

5. Partly as a result of #2 and #4, more social workers and social work researchers will begin exploring the use of crowd-funding projects through internet-based platforms. Mashable did a review of some of these (see 11 Innovative Crowdfunding Platforms for Social Good) a couple years ago and it remains a good list. I have recently seen two researchers raising money for pilot research projects this way, one of whom had been a social media holdout– I think you’ll see more social workers/social scientists jumping on board in the next year.

6. Increasing integration of health and mental health care in North America and the UK (I can’t really speak to the rest of the world). This will increase the demand for social work & related professions taking on roles of care coordination (see these posts on SWSCMedia for more on this)

7. Increased emphasis on interprofessional education, that is, on developing competencies to work effectively with a wide range of health professionals (see #7). This movement has been underway within the health care arena for a while (see Interprofessional Education for an overview and some links) and the baton was recently taken up by the national leadership in social work education in the United States, including the Council on Social Work Education, in calling for the federal government to include social work in these initiatives (see Setting Priorities, Serving the Nation: A Shared Agenda for Social Work Education).

8. Continued growth in mobile applications (“apps”) that could be used by social workers and related professionals. Apps are taking off in the culture at large, and 2012 saw the beginning of more apps available for social workers. I think that some of this interest is because social workers are getting smart phones, especially since it’s become harder and harder to buy a non-smart phone in wireless stores (in the United States at least). For more on this trend, see my blog post Mobile Apps and the Savvy Social Worker ) and the blog Mobile Social Work, curated by Lutz Siemer.

9. More interest by early adopter social workers in using games to accomplish our work (intervention, education). This is extension of the larger cultural trend toward gameification that has been underway (see Gartner’s Gamification 2020: What Is the Future of Gamification?. Those who are interested in this trend should also take a look at the work of Mike Langlois, LCSW, his recent book, Reset (available on Amazon ebooks), which focuses on video games and psychotherapy, and his recent list of social justice games (Angry Birds, Advent, and the 12 Links of Christmas).

10. Increased discussion, among social workers, of the social justice implications of people who don’t have Internet access. As society moves more and more key information online, people who don’t have ready access to the Internet will be at a greater and greater disadvantage. Perhaps more importantly, the Internet tools that enable the creation of content will not be available to whole segments of society. I would like to share some credit for this idea with Mozart Guerrier for the recent Facebook conversation we had about Internet access as a human right as we were discussing the United Nations declaring Internet Access a Human Right.

Wishes for the Future

The New Year is a great time for hope too. Here’s what I wish the future would bring:

1. More loan forgiveness money available for social workers who have accrued loans while acquiring their education, especially given rising costs for higher education and low social work salaries. While there are some loan forgiveness programs available in the United States, the funds are exhausted quickly. Based on my conversations with social workers from around the globe, such programs are needed worldwide.

2. Increased awareness, by policymakers, of the value of what social work and social work research brings to the problems society is confronting. This would be evidenced by seeing the profession listed in legislation and policy documents wherever relevant, and having our major professional bodies invited to weigh in on significant social problems whenever major task forces, commissions, or policy boards are assembled.

3. Working through our professional fears about technology. Technology is neither good nor bad, it depends on how it’s utilized. I would love to see our whole profession let go of the inherent distrust that many of our colleagues harbor about technology and related change (see blog posts on technology fears and on cultural incompetence for some rants on this topic). We are a profession that is supposed to know something about change, therefore, we should know how to use all the existing tools to accomplish what we do, especially those that help to connect people across distances to collaborate and work together (e.g., social media).

4. Social work/social care salaries set at levels suggesting that society values what we do as much as it values making money. In my mind our salaries should at least be comparable with what people, with comparable education, earn in the business sector.

5. Self-care for ourselves and efforts to help impaired social workers. I am becoming increasingly concerned about our lack of attention to this topic. In a recent article, Trauma-Informed Practice [Smyth, N.J. & Greyber, L.A., forthcoming in Thyer,B.A., Dulmus,C.M., & Sowers, K.M. (Eds), Developing Evidence-Based Generalist Practice Skills. New York: Wiley Press] we discussed that, “trauma-informed practice also requires that we examine how working with traumatized clients can affect our own vulnerability to experiencing secondary traumatic stress (STS), that is the stress-related symptoms that develop as a result of close contact with people who have experienced significant trauma. While much of the content on STS is anecdotal, some research is beginning to emerge that identifies it is a significant problem that deserves attention. For example, one study found that half [my emphasis, now] the social workers surveyed reported significant levels of STS (Bride, 2007).” It should be noted that the Bride study surveyed all social workers and child welfare workers across a state. I just don’t hear the level of discussion about impaired social workers, in professional and academic circles, that a finding like this would suggest is needed. It would be wonderful if 2013 were the year to bring this topic into the open.

I would love to hear your predictions and wishes, as well as any thoughts/reactions you might have to what I’ve written.

This post is cross-posted from a guest post that I did for the Social Work/Social Care & Media blog as part of their Twitter debate series. There are several wonderful posts there addressing the same topic–check them out!

Photo (“Crystal Ball”) courtesy of Pascal (Pasukaru76) on Flickr.

Why Visual is the New Black

Visual Platforms Take Off

Although I was a early adopter of Pinterest, I confess that it took me a while to understand it. I set up an account sometime in mid-2011 after Jens P. Berget at Sly Marketing mentioned it in one of his newsletters. And then I  did nothing with it for about 6 months, because I didn’t really see it’s appeal.

I don’t recall why I reconnected with Pinterest, but as more people were using it and I saw their images, I began to understand it better. Initially it appealed to the part of me that likes to look through well-designed magazines: I found the images engaging and relaxing. Years ago I had started to create scrapbooks of magazine pictures that appealed to me (a project that was recommended by one of the creative journaling books I was reading) — eventually those scrapbooks gathered dust with a pile of images that I didn’t have the time to paste into the books. And finally I just threw them out. So Pinterest started as a virtual version of those scrapbooks for me. Then I began to see posts from people like Beth Kanter, who in January 2011 wrote about using Pinterest as a curation tool  and that non-profits were using it to promote their organizations and engage their communities. My understanding of Pinterest matured and I began to see more options for using it in other ways, for example, the Social Work Apps Pinterest board maintained by Dorlee M and me and the Visions of Social Work board that both promotes the profession and highlights some aspects of our school. In his recent Wired article, In Defense of Pinterest, Clive Thompson describes how a therapist used Pinterest to help her clients communicate their moods when words just wouldn’t work.

A Big Picture View

Pinterest also intrigued me because it provided a web experience that was at odds with the shift to mobile. Pinterest was at its best on the computer, where you could view all the images together on your screen, truly replicating the experience of a cork board. A smart phone view of Pinterest wasn’t worth the trouble.  As tablet versions finally evolved, they began to do better at providing a good Pinterest experience.  But I still find that Pinterest is best viewed on a computer.

The Infographic Infographic

I don’t think it’s an accident that something like Pinterest started around the same time that popular interest in infographics caught on. While infographics have been with us (by other names) for centuries, they have grown significantly in popularity in the last couple of years. And like Pinterest, many recent infographics don’t translate well to a smart phone or even to a tablet computer. They are best viewed on a large computer screen or printed as a poster.

As I encountered Pinterest and then, more and more infographics, I declared (to no one in particular), “Visual is the New Black.” This wasn’t exactly a genius insight. After all, video sharing has been growing in popularity for many years (and transfers quite well to mobile devices).  However, unlike videos, both Pinterest and infographics are pushing us toward getting “the big picture,” literally, they really communicate best when they are on large screens. This suggested  to me that something else was behind Pinterest and infographics than just what drove our interest in video, which everyone was just fine with watching on small screens.

Insight from Research

Then recently I encountered an article by the BBC that offered some insight into why visual might be so appealing now. The researchers at Mindlab International found that, “when tasks were presented visually rather than using traditional text-based software applications, individuals used around 20% less cognitive resources. In other words, their brains were working a lot less hard.” They also found that people were more likely to recall more of the information at a later point in time. The BBC article had the following headline: Pretty pictures: Can images stop data overload? At a time when people are complaining more and more about information overload, this research suggests that visual may help us take in information differently, with less stress and better recollection, perhaps helping us get a better sense of the big picture in recognizing patterns and relationships. The company that commissioned the research, MindJet, applied this research to the workplace through their infographic, Evolution of Workplace Technology, which concludes by highlighting how the visual display of information increases productivity.

The belief that “A picture is worth a thousand words” has been with us a long time. At a time when we are struggling to cope with all the information coming at us, might it be that the increased use of visual imagery to communicate is suggesting a direction for more manageability in our lives? I suspect it will not be quite so simple as just making everything visual–we can become overloaded by images and infographics as well.  But these trends have made me aware that I need to learn more about using images effectively because it’s clear to me that the world is becoming increasingly oriented toward using visual imagery to communicate.

Photo credits

Eye and Lashes by lindes

The Infographic Infographic by Emilie Ogez

Mobile Apps and the Savvy Social Worker

Icon from our Savvy Social Worker App

Last spring I was asked by Lindsey Getz of Social Work Today to weigh in on the topic of mobile applications (apps) in social work — I think they found me through my blog post on this topic. Lindsey wrote a great article, and, per usual, the University at Buffalo (UB) university news service mentioned the article in an university-wide email. A few weeks later a UB staff member, Matthew Stock, contacted me to see if I wanted to develop an Android app for social work. Matt and I had worked together in the past on a committee that I had chaired for one of the information technology university projects. I had really enjoyed working with him — he’s a tech whiz who also has excellent management and people skills. And he’s also just a great guy– so I was intrigued by the invitation and decided to take him up on it. But that then raised the issue of what type of app to develop.

An App is Born

As I thought more about apps and social work I decided that the best way to select an app was to think about what problems or challenges an app could help solve. As luck would have it, I attended the 10 year celebration of an evidence-based practice project that we’ve been spearheading. The graduates (who were now supervising students from the project) talked about how hard it is to stay abreast of new developments in practice, especially evidence-based practice. This also is a challenge that I’ve heard often from workshop attendees as well as from alumni. And that’s how we came up with the idea for The Savvy Social Worker app. Matt made it come alive, and we we released it at this years Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Annual Program Meeting in Washington, D.C.

The Savvy Social Worker is really very simple: it’s just a newsreader where we have pulled in key RSS feeds from around the United States. However, few social workers understand the concept of RSS feeds, let alone know how to pull them in. And few people will take the time to go around the web and identify all the feeds to put them in one place. I know that I’ve found the app useful, simple though it is. So I hope that others will, too.

Social Work Apps & The Tipping Point

As a result of this experience I’ve become more interested in social work apps. My sense is that social work/human services apps are approaching the “tipping point” and that we will see many, many more. DorleeM and I have started to collect social work apps on our shared Pinterest Board. So I would love to hear your ideas on this topic on any or all of these questions:

• What apps would you like to see developed for social work?
• Do you agree with my assessment about the “tipping point” for apps in social work? Why or why not?
• Have we missed any good apps on our Pinterest Board?
• Any other thoughts on this topic?

You can download the Savvy Social Worker  from here, in the Google Play store