ICTs and Professional Autonomy

The advance of ICTs in the human services has generated §many concerns, including a proposition that professional autonomy §is necessarily compromised. Database systems, and the associated §managerialist scrutiny, enable a dehumanising intrusion into the §worker/client relations that constitute social casework. ICTs and §Professional Autonomy responds to this concern by tracing the §historically developed shift from the rituals of self-reflection §attached to process recording through to the risk management §calculations associated with desktop recording. Dearman s §conclusion, based on a post-structuralist analytics of power and §knowledge, is that autonomy is not simply a matter of principled §freedom from managerial power but rather a disposition to act, §which in turn is an outcome of different forms of engagement with §changing techniques of representation. As recording practices have §shifted, from a profound reliance on process and self-reflection to §an abbreviated keying of relevant information , so too has the §nature of real relations between professional labour and §management, and so too has the capacity of professional social §workers for self-mastery .