A Communicative Approach to Technology and Capacity Building for Social Service Delivery on St. Kitts: Social Protection, Information Technology and Rhetoric

This project explores capacity building in information and communication technology (ICT) among paraprofessional social workers in the Department of Social and Community Development in St. Kitts during a transition period as the department migrates from paper to electronic records. Based on work from prior research projects, we specifically undertook the exploration of the relationship between professional identity and professional communication as it occurs in the development of writing skills required to document client service and prepare effective reports for use in program design and evaluation. We learned that initially following instruction in the basic tenets of rhetoric (e.g., audience point of view and methods of effective argumentative support), paraprofessionals readily adopted these into their writing. We propose rhetoric, understood as the development and presentation of persuasive argument, as a link between local stakeholders and international donor groups, providing stakeholders with new tools for effecting change, especially as an essential complement to increased access to ICT.