ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the main questions that should be asked about social work recording, including some already raised in the literature. N. S. Dumas has asked such a question in connection with the American Rehabilitation Service. He indicated that the answer depended on whether or not the following assumptions held good: that the critical deficiency under which most rehabilitation workers operate is the lack of relevant information and that better communication among rehabilitation personnel improve organizational performances. Ada Eliot Sheffield identified the topical and chronological organization of the narrative. Sheffield saw some advantages of chronological recording. Discussions of recording in methods of work other than social casework are by no means numerous, but it is clear that recording is considered of very great importance in groupwork, community work and residential work. George W. Goetschius offers one way of recording in community work, but suggests exhaustively that systems of recording will differ according to agency policy, and field-work circumstances.
