Defining transactional language
We previously wrote about how we designed and tested our areas of practice and roles pages. We also carried out content review sessions of these pages with principal social workers. A common theme that came out of these sessions was highlighting our use of transactional language and its negative connotations. Participants were clear that we should change this language to be more interactional.
Social workers make a clear distinction between transactional and interactional language when describing how they build relationships with children and families. Transactional language is defined as viewing relationships as transactions to achieve a defined outcome. Interactional language emphasises building and maintaining relationships that aren’t solely focused on pursuing a fixed outcome.
Transactional language is commonly used to describe something being done to the subject (such as children and families) instead of being done with them.
Identifying and changing transactional language
The content review sessions formed the basis of the next stage of iterations on the content. During these sessions we identified some instances of transactional language to be changed. Afterwards, we created a criteria to use to audit our roles and areas of practice pages to identify all instances of transactional language.
Some examples of transactional language we identified and changed were:
- carrying out assessments 'with children’ instead of ‘of children’
- avoiding words that imply top-down relationships like ‘monitoring’ and ‘managing’
- avoiding the phrase ‘engaging with children and families’
- changing phrases like ‘placing children in foster homes’ to ‘finding foster placements and supporting children in them’
We applied the criteria across all our roles and areas of practice changes. Where possible, we used repeat content patterns where describing things that were common across multiple roles or areas of practice.
Testing the changes
We later tested these iterations in content review sessions with social workers. During these sessions we found that participants were highlighting far fewer instances of transactional language than previously. We made further changes where instances were identified and updated the criteria. We will continue to iterate on these pages and test them.