From epic texts to filling out AI-supported forms

From epic texts to filling out AI-supported forms. Child and youth services as reflected in their files.

In child and youth welfare, the written nature of social work is particularly important, for example in the context of help planning processes. Biographical interventions in life (worlds) - for example, when parental care is withdrawn - are only carried out after written justification.

Even with increasing formalization, texts by socio-educational professionals contain elements of self-expression in the form of attitudes or assumptions. Using examples of youth welfare office documentation from the end of the 1950s to the present day, it is shown how writing practices and professional development are intertwined.

The analytical view of record keeping, adapting the documentary method, is directed not only at file documents but also at digital forms. In this way, the focus is not only on historical change but also on the effectiveness of human-machine interactions that intervene in previous routines of action. Professional standards such as participation or resource orientation, which have become established over time, are currently being put to the test and are challenging the players in a special way.

The cross-faculty lecture series "Writing Practices of Social Work" of the Institute for Translation and Multilingual Communication (ITMK, F03) and the Institute for the Science of Social Work (IRIS, F01) reflects the culturally and organizationally established practices and routines of reporting by social work in the fields of action, taking into account professional communication research.