Social Media and Digital Technology for Social Work practice

It's been a long time in the planning but it's been well worth it. I have been working  with David McKendrick from GCU and Jon Bolton from the University of Dundee to plan a conference about social media in social work practice. We have been sponsored by the SSSC to hold the event at the Stirling Court Hotel on 8th February 2016.

The three of us hatched the plan for the conference as we recognised that there were pockets of good practice happening and we thought it would be helpful to provide opportunities to share the practice and for social workers to think about what social media and digital technologies could contribute to practice.

There's been a massive amount of interest in this event and we've got a great line up of presenters, who are all innovators in their fields. We have Amanda Taylor one of JISC's top 50 social media influencers hosting our Innovation Station at the conference. The general idea is that practitioners can come along and talk to our tech team about ideas they have for introducing social media into their practice. Our team will discuss the technical, governance and practical aspects of these ideas and explore how they can be taken forward into practice.

We are thrilled that Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner the designer of the Social Media for Social Work App will be demonstrating how this can be used in practice. Dr Anne Campbell is also coming along to talk about several Apps she has been involved in developing for social work training and practice. As well as academics we have several practitioners from across Scotland who will be talking about how they are using social media to support service users and carers.

There's still a lot of work for us to do but we are really excited to be launching the conference
programme and looking forward to having lots of discussions about how we can make effective use of digital technologies and social media in social work practice.

Booking details and further information available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thinking-of-the-the-future-innovations-and-developments-for-social-work-practice-tickets-19249165773