Since social workers must complete many forms and records for each child they help, they are now using AI with those tasks. A study by The Open University found that AI was most used as virtual assistants, chatbots (more in this article), transcription software (which turns spoken words into text), and AI scribe software (more in this article). 

Since last year, Microsoft Copilot (a virtual assistant and chatbot) is now being used by more than 1400 social workers, educational psychologists and support officers in Lancashire County. They use this tool to cut down on the time it takes to create complicated social care assessments – detailed reports summarising chats and information a social worker gathers. Now, reports that used to take up to two days to complete take only three to four hours!

One big benefit of using AI is that it helps social workers who are neurodivergent (this is where someone’s brain works, learns, and processes information differently from most people). A neurodivergent social worker with dyslexia (a condition that makes it hard for a person to read, write, and spell) said that they use an AI tool to transcribe the conversation they had (make voice to text), then put the transcript (the text) they get into another AI tool to summarise it. They said that with the right AI instructions, it can give them detailed case notes.

However, these tools also have downsides. To see exactly what social workers think of AI assistants like Copilot, the Ada Lovelace Institute interviewed social workers with experience of using AI transcription tools, as well as senior staff involved in getting and evaluating them. One social worker said that Copilot often won’t transcribe details about abuse due to safety guardrails, which limits what they can use the tool for. Another social worker said that since Copilot isn’t made for social care, they have to carefully check the assessments. A lot of social workers also worry about how protected the data that they give to AI tools might be. 

The North Yorkshire Council also made a proof of concept AI data search tool (a tester tool that proved they could use the concept they thought of) to help social workers find and sort through different kinds of information, like notes and images. This was different to most other tools that did the same as it was made specifically for the children’s social care data system. When they launched it in a controlled environment (with only a few social workers using it), the tools showed a 90% reduction in time and cost for some data retrieval tasks compared to the current system. Although it’s a good start, it’s important to note that it only reduced time and cost for a few tasks, not many.