Learning outcomes

After this chapter you will be able to:

• 1 recognise the importance of the topic of mistakes in social work;

• 2 define mistakes and connected concepts in social work;

• 3 look at how different ideas of correctness can generate conflicts but also enrich views of social work practice and its effectiveness;

• 4 be aware of how intuition and heuristics may lead to mistakes;

• 5 possess a clear picture of the main causes and effects of mistakes in social work.

Introduction

Reflection can be carried out on any kind of experience, but reflection on mistakes is more fruitful because the unexpected failure of an action, or a series of actions, creates uneasiness in its author. These uncomfortable feelings may prompt you to look for answers to questions like “What happened? What went wrong? What did I do wrong?” in order to eliminate or reduce the discomfort that you are feeling. At the same time, reflection on mistakes is important in order to understand how to reduce the damage produced by them and to avoid repeating the same error in the future. Learning from mistakes is also ethically important on the difficult path towards the full realisation of the ‘doing no harm’ principle that, according to the most recent ‘Global definition of social work’ (IFSW and IASSW, 2014), is one of the overarching principles of social work, together with respect for the inherent worth and dignity of human beings, respect for diversity, and upholding human rights and social justice.

In this chapter a mistake is defined as a reality of any human activity, including social work. In everyday language a mistake is an action, statement or belief that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right or true. Then more precise and scientific definitions are given in connection to the ideas of failure and experience of error. However, who decides what is right and what is not? In fact it is common to find divergent answers to this basic question since a number of different subjects (social workers, service users, organisations, communities) are involved in social work interventions and might have different opinions from their particular perspective.