CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Davis-Mendelow, S. (1998). Bridging the gap: Exploring the information needs and information use of front-line child protection intake workers. Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto. Advisor, Rob MacFadden.
© Steven Davis-Mendelow (1998).
You may be able to order a full copy of this dissertation through the author, or through ProQuest Dissertation Express.

ADVISOR:
Rob MacFadden

ABSTRACT:
This is a study of how front-line child protection intake social workers (front-line workers) at selected Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario perceive their information needs, and how they use information and information systems in relation to these needs. This study employs a qualitative ethnographic approach to examine the experiences of 25 front-line workers in the context of the following questions: (1) how do front-line workers perceive their information needs in the context of their assessment-related tasks? (2); what are the gaps, barriers and helps that front-line workers encounter in attempting to meet these needs? (3); what is the information-seeking behavior of front-line workers with respect to information sources and systems? Applying the Sense-Making Methodology, which emphasizes as critical the perspective of the information-user and provides a useful analytical framework in its vocabulary of “gaps,” “barriers,” and “helps,” this study finds that front-line workers perceive a profound disjunction between their information needs and the formalized information systems at their disposal.

In order to effectively perform their central gate-keeping functions of initial client assessment in the time and resource constrained realities of present-day child protection work, front-line workers require case-relevant information in a timely, highly accessible and user-friendly format. The information base of the agencies investigated, however, appear to fall far short of this ideal, serving as they do several masters in the competing and sometimes conflicting information requirements of a variety of legal and administrative stakeholders within and outside of the agency. The result of this “top-down” design is a monolithic and bureaucratic information system that front-line workers consider for their purposes as remote, unwieldy, and largely unresponsive to their assessment-related needs.

Observation of front-line workers in the performance of their tasks reveals that an alternative and informal information system appears to have evolved organically and spontaneously alongside the formal. This loosely structured system appears to represent a grassroots, “bottom-up” response to the perceived shortcomings of the formal one. Its main method of information transmission is oral rather than written, and the narrative vehicle is of critical import as a mode of information transfer. Significantly, rather than hub and centerpiece of the information system, the computerized information base is, to a large degree, marginalized.

Unless the gap is bridged between what the front-line worker perceives as his or her information needs in the context of assessment and what is formally provided by the agency, an ever-increasing reliance on computerized information systems threatens to perpetuate, or exacerbate, this gap.

OTHER MATERIALS BY THIS AUTHOR ON THIS WEBSITE:
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistdavismendelow.html