Standardized knowledge, the IBIC and knowledge-based social services

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the contribution of standardized methods to knowledge-based social services. The point of departure for the study is the Swedish assessment method the Individual’s Needs in Focus (IBIC). How does the IBIC, based on the terminology of the ICF, contribute to standardized documentation and to a focus on the needs of the individual? The study is based on 80 social service investigations, from four different Swedish municipalities, concerning daily living support interventions, as well as 13 interviews with case officers. Our analysis exposes major flaws in terms of clarity and uniformity. The client’s needs may be seemingly randomly assigned to a particular life domain; environmental factors and personal factors have no specified content, and the assessment of the degree to which functioning is limited is subjective. As a standardized method, the IBIC fails in the fundamental requirement of providing a basis for comparison – the headings do not necessarily coincide with the content. From a social perspective, one can also question why, according to the IBIC, needs are centred to functions, supposedly improved by practice/learning. Overall, this also jeopardizes its value relative to goal fulfilment at both individual and aggregated levels. We argue that one reason why it is difficult to apply the IBIC is that its construction does not align with the premise of social work. The IBIC constructs an approach to knowledge that tends to place a high premium on the simple and well-defined, rather than the holistic and complex.