Digital administrative mediation: communication infrastructures and institutional interaction in child welfare systems

Clicks: 17
ID: 333301
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #26 of 34 articles by views in The British Journal of Social Work

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract Digital technologies increasingly shape interaction within child welfare systems, but they do not constitute a single integrated infrastructure. Family-facing communication tools, worker-facing documentation systems, and interorganizational technologies perform distinct functions within a broader communication ecology through which interaction is transmitted, recorded, circulated, and interpreted. This conceptual article introduces digital administrative mediation to describe the contingent processes through which communication infrastructures shape the timing, format, visibility, documentation, and institutional interpretation of interactions between families and child welfare agencies. Drawing together scholarship on digital social work, infrastructure, institutional trust, administrative burden, surveillance, relationship-based practice, and digital inequality, the article argues that digitalization reorganizes longstanding documentary and interpretive practices by altering the speed, persistence, granularity, circulation, retrievability, and apparent precision of administrative traces. These infrastructures may support transparency, accessibility, continuity, procedural support, and reciprocal accountability while also contributing to digital distance through relational displacement, asymmetrical visibility, proceduralization, administrative burden, and unequal participation. Their effects depend on technological design, organizational conditions, professional discretion, relationship-based practice, digital vulnerability, and opportunities for children and families to clarify or contest institutional representations. The article concludes by identifying implications for rights-based design, participatory governance, accessibility, ethical documentation, and institutional accountability.
Reference Key
openalex_W7223149197 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Megan McCarthy
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal The British Journal of Social Work
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/bjsw/bcag266
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcag266
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.