How can social services gain a better understanding of how children and young people in out-of-home care are doing between their regular check-ins? Social workers from the placement unit in Södertälje share how they have used Previct Care as a digital complement in their work with children and young people in foster homes and kinship placements.
A way to stay in touch between conversations
For children and young people placed outside their own homes, daily life can involve many emotions, questions, and changes. Contact with parents, the situation in the foster home, and how things are going at school can all affect a child’s well-being. At the same time, it is not always easy to talk about one’s situation during a scheduled meeting with a social worker.
In a webinar, two social workers from Södertälje Municipality explain how they have begun using Previct Care to provide children and young people with an additional way to express themselves. Through customized questions, a digital diary, and other digital support tools, social workers can obtain supplementary information to help monitor a child’s situation.
The child gets to help decide on the questions.
In one of the examples, a social worker describes their work with a girl who has been placed within her own social network—specifically, with someone close to her. Together with the girl, the social worker has developed questions focusing on aspects that are important in her everyday life.
For example, it could involve:
- How things have gone at school.
- How she has been feeling during the day.
- How contact and time spent with the mother have worked out.
- Whether she has done anything fun after school.
The girl has been involved in deciding which questions she wants to answer; even the social worker’s suggestions were discussed and approved together with her. In this way, the questions serve not merely as a means of gathering information, but also as an opportunity to increase the child’s participation in the follow-up process.
Monitoring well-being before and after family visits
Another example concerns a teenager who has been living in a foster home for several years, at a great distance from their social worker.
The social worker had noted that the young person’s well-being could shift in connection with spending time with a parent. By using tailored questions and an overview of the responses, they were able to track how the young person’s well-being varied over time—which also provided a concrete basis for their discussions.
Instead of simply asking how the visitation had gone, the social worker could revisit specific occasions and, together with the young person, explore what had worked well, what had been difficult, and what kind of support might be needed.
A digital support tool tailored to the child’s interests
In the examples, the social workers also describe how they have tried to make Previct Care relevant to each child.
For a girl with a keen interest in dance, a dance video was included that she could use for a moment of distraction whenever things felt difficult; for another young person, videos related to his interest in cars were used. This illustrates how digital support can be tailored to a child’s personal interests—making it more individualized than simple questioning or follow-ups—while the digital diary also serves as a space for the child to write about topics that might be hard to bring up directly.
Better-prepared conversations
The social workers also describe a potential use for children who frequently contact their social worker via text message when they feel worried.
By offering an opportunity to write down thoughts and feelings, the social worker could gain a better basis for the next interaction. It is also important to distinguish between the option to provide information and the receipt of immediate assistance, as digital notes do not replace standard channels of communication or established procedures for urgent situations.
More opportunities to listen to the child’s perspective
What makes Södertälje’s example particularly interesting is that Previct Care is used with a focus on the child’s everyday life, participation, and need for contact.
It is not a matter of sobriety tests, but rather of using digital features to supplement social work; by allowing the child to influence the questions, tracking their well-being over time, and using the responses as a basis for discussion, therapists and social workers gain further opportunities to listen to the child’s perspective.
Sometimes, a simple question on a mobile phone can be the start of an important conversation.
The article is based on a previous webinar in which social workers from Södertälje Municipality shared their experiences and planned use cases for Previct. The examples describe their working methods at the time of the webinar and should not be interpreted as documented treatment outcomes.