The reality of digital professional practice for social workers: A study applied to workers in youth care departments

This research highlights the use of technology in digital professional practice as one of the important developments that impacts the practice of social service in general, and improves the performance of workers in youth care departments in particular. The current research aimed to communicate and present a set of proposals that may contribute to developing and enhancing the capabilities of social workers working in youth care departments to use digital professional practice in providing services by identifying the reality of digital professional practice for social workers working in youth care departments. And identifying the obstacles that prevent the use of digital professional practice. This research belongs to the descriptive studies style. The researcher used the descriptive approach using the comprehensive social survey method. The researcher relied on the questionnaire as a tool, and it was applied to a sample of (30) specialists in the youth care departments at the faculties of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The results reached the verification of the research problem, which is represented in trying to determine the reality of the digital professional practice of social workers in youth care departments, and then tried to find proposals that might work to develop the capabilities of social workers working in youth care departments to use digital technology in providing their professional services to young clients. The results of the field study revealed the average responses of the human study community regarding the reality of using digital professional practice for social workers working in youth care departments, and the strength of the responses of the human study community regarding the obstacles that prevent the use of digital professional practice for social workers working in youth care departments. The strength of the human study community's responses to the proposals that may contribute to developing and enhancing the capabilities of social workers working in youth care departments to use digital professional practice.