3.4 The importance of description

Hello, Lisa. Well, thanks for joining me today. From the many conversations that we’ve had about writing in social work and from the many different types of texts that I’ve looked at from social work, it’s clear that description is absolutely crucial. Could you say something about what description is in social work writing and why it’s so important?

I think that description is a way of trying to capture information in social work writing. You can be talking about people, places, and events. And it’s really important when doing that the information is specific and detailed. The other thing is it can be really important in terms of evidence when it comes to decision making for children and families and any other aspect of social work.

So description is absolutely crucial to everything that you’re doing.

Absolutely.

I think it would be useful if we look at some brief examples. So example one is from a single assessment and says the home environment is clean.

So that would be an example of describing places.

Example two is from a case note and says his father told him to leave and get his belongings.

So that’s describing what happened.

Example three is from a case note again. They’ve both been seen with bruising and marks.

So that’s describing people in their states.

Example four is from a court report and says he is presently seeing his probation officer.

And that would be describing who’s involved.

Example 5 is from a single assessment. She says she feels safe.

So that’s describing how someone’s feeling.

The last example here, example 6, which is also from a case note says I contacted the school who have reported numerous incidents, some requiring physical intervention.

So that’s describing what the social worker has done in a situation.

So there’s lots of different kinds of description. Are these descriptions here typical, do you think?

I think it’s important to remember that social workers are going to be using a combination of these descriptions in the writing that they do.

So let’s have a look at an example where perhaps some of these are brought together. This is from a case note. This is an example seven. Peter has been given a 24-week sentence. Jane, his mother, feels he needs intensive residential rehab but does not believe he would volunteer for this. She’s wondering whether there is any means of compelling him in his best interests. I assessed Peter under the Mental Health Act this week, and he’s not detainable.

Well, there’s a number of things going on here. We can clearly see description of what happened, a description of what someone feels or thinks about the situation, and a description of what the social worker did. So in this case, it’s a specific assessment, which led to the social worker having a particular conclusion.

Thank you, Lisa. I think people can underestimate how difficult good description is in social work for a number of reasons. One obvious one is that it’s impossible for anybody to describe every single detail about something that’s going on. And secondly, even if you could, you would never have the time to write all that description. So how do you go about deciding what kinds of things to describe in everyday social work?

Well, I think it’s important that you use your professional judgement in all aspects of the work you do to really think about the specific information that needs to go into a report. So that’s really contextual in terms of the case and the report you’re writing. So earlier, we talked about an example in a single assessment of a clean home environment. And I think, in that example, if say it was a child neglect case, that would be really important to highlight in that particular case-- in that particular example.

So everything has to be contextually specific and relevant to that case to be able to decide what detail should go in.

I agree.

I think it would be useful to look at an example here. So if we look at example eight, this is from an enablement assessment. And it says, when Mary is low in mood, she lacks motivation to complete daily tasks. Mary will struggle to get out of bed and have motivation to prepare meals.

Mary has recently moved into her own flat, and she’s just started living on her own. Therefore, she’s still needing to develop skills surrounding cooking meals and developing this as part of a routine. So wonder what things are going on here then in the description.

So again, we can see a number of things happening here. There’s a description of the actual situation. But there’s also a description of a situation that sometimes arises, alongside an analysis and a judgement about the consequence for Mary’s day-to-day living. So careful description is really important because it influences the decisions that are made about people’s lives.

Thank you, Lisa. So Lisa, we know that description is crucial. But we also know that it’s not necessarily straightforward. It’s not necessarily straightforward to write good or meaningful description. What are the challenges for writing good description from your experience?

Well, I think what’s really important is that description has to have a purpose and be meaningful to you as the author but also to the audience of the report so, for example, managers, panel members, and anyone else that might be reading it. Service users are really important as well. And I think the other thing that comes up quite a lot is that description can be too vague. And it’s really important to try and steer away from that.

I think it would be good to look at some examples of vague description. So let’s have a look at example nine. Her parents are sentimental.

So I guess I’d be asking, what does this mean, and why is it important to mention?

Example 10, he was behaving in a risky way. What would you think about that?

I’d ask what is meant by risky. Is he being risky to himself or to others, for example?

Example 11 – a different example really – the family had Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.

So why is that important to mention? And what is meant by trimmings? That sounds quite vague to me.

So some of those descriptions could be included, but they would need more description or analysis to make those meaningful in a report.

I agree. Absolutely.

I mean, another issue that comes up with description is how much description is enough. And that seems to be really difficult. I don’t know whether that’s an issue that you find is something that comes up a lot.

I think, quite often, social workers can include too much description. And that sometimes takes away from the analysis in a report.

Let’s have a look at an example here. This is example 12. And this is from a prospective adopters report. And it says Hilary has vivid memories of playing out all the time with her brother and children of the village, enjoying day spent running through the fields with the air on her face and sometimes falling asleep in the warm grass.

So it’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong here. But it’s about thinking about what descriptions are important to help the reader make a final decision. And I think, in this case, there is some detail that could be cut out. Enjoying days spent running through the fields with the air on her face and sometimes falling asleep in the warm grass, and the point about enjoying can just be added to the main sentence.

Thank you, Lisa. So social workers often talk about having their own style in writing. And this seems to be quite important because it seems to suggest that people can have a sense of ownership over the writing that they’re doing. But from your experience, are there any particular trouble spots or issues around style?

I think one of the things that can happen in terms of description is that, sometimes, people can focus too much on it. And the language that is used can be quite flowery. And that can be really, really problematic for the reader in various different social work reports.

Are there any examples of this kind of flowery language in any of the texts that we’ve looked at today?

I think if we were to look back at example 12 again, so the air on her face, the warm grass would be an example of flowery language.

Why do you think a social worker might include that kind of flowery language or description?

I think, from my experience, social workers quite often want to focus on bringing an applicant or a service user to life in their reports. And they might get a bit too carried away with that as a focus rather than coming back to the ultimate aim of the report, which is the decision making. That can be really quite tricky.

And so why does language like that detract from the report? What is it that readers such as managers and panel members are critical of?

I think what can happen is that, if somebody, whoever it is reading the report, sees that there’s too much description, too much flowery language, it might detract from the rest of the report. So they might lose trust in the author. And therefore, the meaning later down the report might become less important.

So it actually affects negatively, the reader’s impression of the social worker’s expertise or judgement?

Yeah. I think so. I think, it basically removes the trust in the author.

Thank you, Lisa.