Editor’s Be aware: This weblog publish is customized from the Second Edition of the Social Media Toolkit for Social Work Field Educators.
There are lots of causes for social staff to have a customized social media coverage – to take care of boundaries, defend privateness and confidentiality, and mannequin skilled habits. To be clear, I’m not referring to the coverage that your group or establishment may need, directing the school, employees, and college students on when it’s okay to make use of social media, however one that you simply develop and observe as a person practitioner, pupil, and/or educator. The aim of a social media coverage is to tell purchasers, college students, colleagues, and others about when, how, and why you utilize social media in an expert capability. From an moral lens, this can be a really helpful apply per National Association of Social Worker’s (NASW) Technology in Social Work Practice Customary 2.10 – Social Media Coverage and suits with the NASW Code of Ethics requirements of knowledgeable consent with purchasers (1.3e-i), respect with colleagues (2.1), and when conducting supervision and session (3.1).
The next steps present a information for creating a social media coverage that can be utilized as an task in a classroom with college students or tailored for practitioners:
Step 1: Conduct an web seek for examples of social media insurance policies for different professions corresponding to nursing, medication, occupational remedy, and so forth., and choose two or three that you simply like and one which you don’t like. Evaluate and distinction the insurance policies and determine factors that you simply want to embody in your personal coverage. Alternatively, you could possibly ask college students to evaluation and assess one or two insurance policies that you could have already chosen. One instance is Sean Erreger’s social media policy accessible on his weblog Stuck on Social Work, and one other is My Private Practice Social Media Policy by Dr. Keely Kolmes.
As a result of there are not any set requirements for what ought to be included in a social media coverage or the way it ought to be communicated with purchasers, colleagues, or constituents, this step will assist college students determine frequent points addressed in social media insurance policies and the general tone of the coverage (i.e. does the coverage view social media as dangerous or helpful?). I all the time encourage college students, educators, and practitioners to incorporate the advantages of social media in addition to potential challenges of their insurance policies as a result of these apps are communication instruments that afford alternatives for connection in addition to potential conflicts.
Step 2: Ask college students to finish the Develop your Professional Social Media Policy Worksheet, which features a sequence of questions and a brief self-assessment to higher perceive one’s present use of social media in skilled settings. Listed below are a few of the questions from the worksheet:
- What sources or requirements do it’s worthwhile to take into account?
- Whom are you informing together with your coverage?
- What moral considerations does your coverage want to handle?
- How do you need to have interaction in frequent on-line actions?
Listed below are some extra assets that will assist college students articulate their concepts:
Step 3: After finishing the worksheet, college students ought to have the data they should write their very own social media coverage. We encourage incorporating peer and supervisor opinions as a part of the method.
Step 4: The subsequent step contains implementing the coverage following one’s pointers and by sharing the insurance policies with others, both verbally or in written format. College students can role-play discussing their coverage with a classmate. Moreover, college students ought to periodically evaluation their social media coverage, and replace as wanted due to the quickly altering nature of digital and social applied sciences.
Together with serving to social work college students set boundaries with social media, social work educators ought to mannequin this apply by writing their very own social media insurance policies for partaking with college students. Having a social media coverage for one’s syllabus may help college students handle using know-how for communication and work within the classroom. That is additionally thought of a greatest apply per NASW Technology in Social Work Practice – Customary 4.04. Listed below are two examples:
One ultimate useful resource that I’ll share is the crowd-sourced response that I labored on with my good colleagues, Melanie Sage, Nancy J. Smyth, and quite a few different social work educators who had been on the lookout for extra steering to NASW’s Requirements for Know-how in Social Work Apply. The booklet focuses on the requirements associated to social work training and supervision. You may obtain a free right here:
Do you could have your personal customized social media coverage? In that case, share it with me within the feedback beneath.
The way to cite: Hitchcock, L.I (2021, June 23). Creating a Personalised Social Media Coverage for Social Work Apply. Instructing & Studying in Social Work Weblog. https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2021/06/22/developing-a-personalized-social-media-policy-for-social-work-practice/
