Potential and limitations of socio-technological intervention in the prevention of social orphanhood: perspectives of the main actors

On October 19, a joint scientific and practical online seminar "The potential and limitations of socio-technological intervention in the prevention of social orphanhood" was held.: prospects of the main actors", which was attended by employees of ML ISI and BF "Tagansky Children's Fund". The seminar discussed the substantive and methodological results of a joint project aimed at developing the methodology of scientific and applied analytics in the field of evaluation research in the social sphere.

The study included a comprehensive assessment of the technology for the prevention of social orphanhood, implemented through the practices of "Organizing the work of an interdisciplinary team with a case of violation of the rights of a minor" and "Organizing supervisory support for the process of providing social assistance to families with children." The methods of sociological research were used to assess the dynamics of changes in the crisis situation in families based on the tools available to specialists working with families, as well as a professional assessment of the technology by specialists themselves (curators and supervisors).

Elena Yarskaya-Smirnova, the head of the laboratory of the ISI ML, made an introductory speech, telling about the possibilities and limitations of the methodology of evaluation research in the field of social policy, summarizing the practical experience of the implemented project. Sergey Borzov, Program Director of the Tagansky Children's Fund, spoke about the experience of implementing the technology for the prevention of social orphanhood, the process of training specialists and practical use in the Russian context, presenting the interpretation of the research results by practitioners working with families in a crisis situation. Elena Rozhdestvenskaya, a leading researcher at ML ISI, spoke about the main gaps and semantic folds in the work of social sphere specialists and the possibilities of debugging teamwork with the case between supervisors and curators. Roman Abramov, a leading researcher at the ISI ML, presented a description and interpretation of the contexts of professional culture and professional knowledge of supervisors and curators when working with technology. Marina Alexandrova, a research intern at the ISI ML, spoke about how the methodology for preparing and analyzing data was developed within the framework of the study, briefly describing the key results and the possibilities of using such quantitative analysis for operational management of processes in social projects.

The discussion also revealed prospects for further development of the topic: to increase the efficiency of case management technology and thereby prevent social orphanhood is possible in various ways: to discuss the contours of the standard of therapeutic and organizational care, to calculate certain effects based on the assessment of resources and the quality of social services, to assess the satisfaction of service users, to ensure the quality of the organizational system, documentation, data monitoring, evaluate relationships and therapeutic alliances between specialists and supervisors.

According to the results of the seminar, the participants summarized that the combination of practices "Organization of the work of an interdisciplinary team with a case of violation of the rights of a minor" and "Organization of supervisory support for the process of providing social assistance to families with children" has a generally beneficial effect and contributes to the families' recovery from a crisis situation, and also expressed support for ongoing research in the field of evidence-based social policy and discussed opportunities further cooperation.