Professional Writing for Child Welfare Practitioners

This page from Texas A&M University lays out a summary of what it takes to write proficiently in the field of social work.

This handout will give you tips on how to use language in a way that is clear, accurate, and respectful. These are best practices that apply to any piece of social work writing, whether it is a clinical case note, a policy proposal, or a research paper for school. Please keep in mind that these tips are not meant to be used as hard-and-fast rules. Language changes over time, with conventions coming and going. Social workers need to consider the context in which they are writing; the intended audience and any other people who might potentially access the document (such as a court of law); the reason for writing and the purpose that the information serves; and any possible unintended consequences (McDonald et al., 2015).

This outline from Save the Social Worker discusses the ways that social workers can build their skills to write strong case notes. Please note that Child Welfare Practitioners in Ontario must file paperwork within 24 hours, so the advice regarding 3 days should be disregarded.

This guide assumes that a high-quality product—an essay, a report, a research paper—results from a streamlined, efficient, rigorous process. This guide can usher you through the complete work-flow, from idea to final draft, or you can read it in any order, as your needs or preferences require. Each of the following sections represents a stage in the writing process.

These OWL resources will help you conduct research and compose documents for the workplace, such as memoranda and business letters. This section also includes resources for writing report and scientific abstracts.

The Government of Canada requires their documents to be written in plain language, which this link describes succinctly. “The purpose of a plain-language approach in written communication is to convey information easily and unambiguously. It should not be confused with an oversimplified, condescending style. Rather, by choosing straightforward vocabulary and sentence structures and by organizing and presenting your material clearly and logically, you can save the reader time and effort and ensure that your message will be clearly understood.”

Use this checklist from the American National Archives to see if your document meets plain language standards.

From Web Editor Hub, this is a list of ten ways to ensure the language you are using in your materials is easy to understand.

This Guide to Writing in Plain Language comes from The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, and focuses on ways to write in plain language in clinical reporting while working with children and families.

Use this tool, whether you are a native English speaker or not, to find explanations and exercises on grammar, punctuation, spelling and usage.

Use this tool to find in-depth articles with practice quizzes on English grammar, punctuation, usage and clarity.

The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University is a detailed and thorough site dedicated to helping all people with their writing, research, and citation skills. There is information on professional writing, avoiding plagiarism, English as a Second Language-specific resources, and citation style resources for all types of resources commonly used in reporting.

The Cambridge Online Dictionary and thesaurus provides spellings, definitions, and the option to listen to a word being pronounced out loud with US or UK pronunciation.

Writing Tips Plus looks at difficulties related to grammar, punctuation, spelling and other aspects of the English language. The articles give clear explanations, with examples relating to the Canadian context.

Using a modified version of an existing documentation review worksheet, researchers conducted an exploratory study that examined the quality of documentation among senior BSW social work majors in their last semester, in which they complete a 500-hour field practicum. Results showed that one percent of students documented a client strength and 45.9 percent of students did not sign the document. Additionally, 96 percent of the documents were legible, and 81 percent of students included service provision in their documentation. Recommendations for further research and suggestions for replication are included.

Social workers write a lot and their writing has a major impact on people's lives. The complexity of their writing task arises because they must deal with confidential client information while usually writing for multiple audiences. This means that social work students must achieve more than the basics of technical writing skills. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, after reviewing the literature on the importance and challenges of writing well in social work (and having hosted a number of writing workshops for social workers and human services practitioners), we argue that the development of students' writing skills must be framed within the social, political and ethical professional circumstances in which students will be working in the future. By teaching writing skills through the lens of the profession's ethics and values, students will be instilled with a greater understanding of the importance of writing. Second, we propose a model of ethical professional writing which integrates three essential elements that must conjoin in tandem: reflective mindfulness of the client-centred focus of writing responsibilities; a sound understanding of the values and principles of the social work and human services professions as highlighted in the unifying themes in various codes of ethics; and competence in compositional, rhetorical and technical writing skills. In particular, this article focuses on the second element of this model which is concerned with having a sound understanding of the values and principles of ethical professional writing. We conclude that this framework will promote writing competence and benefit clients.