Records audit, 84 caseworkers, 2,910 open cases

Social work research poster example

Twelve months of routine time records from 84 caseworkers in six offices, laid out as an A0 portrait board with three icon topped key points across the top. The board answers one question a manager can act on: what a caseload of thirty costs in client contact.

Create a poster with OneCraftA0 Portrait, printed at 841 by 1189 millimetres

The whole board

The poster at full size, exactly as it prints. Every number, citation and caption on it was written for this example, so the layout is being judged on real content.

What a caseload of thirty costs: contact hours across 84 caseworkers in six offices

G. Achebe ¹, F. Lindqvist ¹

1 School of Social Work, Havenport University

The question

Caseload caps are argued for on the grounds that a worker with fewer clients spends more time with each of them, and argued against on the grounds that the relationship is weak and the cap is expensive. Neither side has much evidence from routine records. This audit uses twelve months of time recorded against client files in six offices to ask how weekly contact hours change as a caseload grows, and where, if anywhere, the curve bends.

WHAT WE DID

Design. Retrospective audit of routine time records, twelve consecutive months, no worker survey.

Workers. 84 caseworkers across six offices, caseloads ranging from 18 to 41 open clients.

Clients. 2,910 open cases over the period, counted at the end of each month rather than annually.

Measure. Hours logged as direct client contact, in person or by phone, excluding travel and notes.

Analysis. Worker level means by caseload band, then a within office comparison to remove office effects.

Results

Mean direct contact across all 84 workers was 12.8 hours a week. Workers carrying under 30 open cases averaged 14.1 hours; those carrying 30 or more averaged 11.0. The fall is not gradual across the whole range. Between 18 and 29 cases contact drops by about a tenth, and between 29 and 40 it drops by a quarter. Every one of the six offices shows the same direction. Workers in the forties averaged 9.8 hours, two thirds of the figure for workers under twenty cases.

Figure 1. Mean weekly contact hours (h) by caseload: A under 20, B 20s, C 30s, D 40 or more open cases.

Source: routine time records, twelve months, six offices.

What the curve means for a cap

The practical reading is that the cost of an extra case is not constant. Adding a case to a worker at 22 takes about 8 minutes a week from every other client on that worker list. Adding a case to a worker at 34 takes about 20 minutes. A cap set at 30 therefore buys more contact per dollar than a cap set at 25, because it removes cases from the part of the range where each one is most expensive, and it is cheaper to enforce because only 35 of the 84 workers in this service are above it. That is an argument about where to put a cap, not about whether contact hours are the right thing to buy. This audit cannot say whether more contact produces better outcomes for clients, and nothing in routine time records will answer that. It can say that the trade is steeper than the flat assumption most caseload policies are written on, and that a service which lets caseloads drift into the high thirties is losing contact time faster than its own headcount figures suggest. Three limits are worth putting on the board rather than in the paper. Time records undercount by an unknown margin: workers log contact against a file and log nothing against the twenty minute phone call that covers three families at once. Caseload counts are taken at month end, so a worker who closed six cases in the first week of a month appears to have carried them all month. And the six offices are not identical: the two with the highest contact are also the two with the lowest vacancy rates, which may mean that contact follows staffing rather than caseload, and the within office comparison narrows that risk without removing it. A fourth service in the same region declined to share records, and its caseloads are known to run higher than any office here.

REFERENCES

1.Lindqvist, F. (2025) Reading routine time records as a workload measure. Journal of Social Work Practice, 39(1), 22 to 44.

2.Ombura, D. and Achebe, G. (2024) Caseload caps and the marginal case. Social Services Review Quarterly, 18(3), 158 to 179.

3.Tremayne, P. (2026) Vacancy, caseload and contact in six district offices. Havenport Social Work Papers 2026-02.

11.0 hours

weekly contact above thirty cases

Against 14.1 hours below thirty, 84 caseworkers, twelve months of records

Contact hours a week

Figure 2. Mean weekly direct contact hours by office, fourteen caseworkers in each.

Source: routine time records, twelve months, 2,910 open cases.

Conclusion

Weekly direct contact falls from 14.1 hours below a caseload of thirty to 11.0 hours above it, and the fall steepens across the range rather than running straight. The marginal case costs roughly two and a half times as much contact time at 34 cases as it does at 22, which is an argument about where a cap is set rather than about whether one is worth having at all.

Mean contact 12.8 hours a week across 84 caseworkers

14.1 hours below thirty cases, 11.0 hours above

Same direction in all six offices, 2,910 open cases

The marginal case costs more as the caseload grows

Block by block

What each block on the board is for, in the order a reader walks it.

Title band, two authors and a QR code: The title poses the operational question and gives the sample: what a caseload of thirty costs, across 84 caseworkers in six offices. Two authors share one school affiliation, with the QR code at the right of the band.
The question: Caseload caps are argued for on the grounds that fewer clients means more time each, and against on the grounds that the relationship is weak and the cap is expensive. Neither side has much evidence from routine records, which is what this audit uses.
What we did: Five labelled entries: a retrospective audit of twelve consecutive months of time records with no worker survey, 84 caseworkers with caseloads from 18 to 41, 2,910 open cases counted monthly, direct contact excluding travel and notes, and a within office comparison.
Results: Mean direct contact across all 84 workers was 12.8 hours a week. Below thirty open cases it was 14.1 hours; at thirty or more it was 11.0. The fall steepens across the range, and every one of the six offices shows the same direction.
Two figures: The first bands workers by caseload, keyed A to D in the caption, and shows contact falling from 15.0 to 9.8 hours. The second gives mean weekly contact hours by office as a horizontal bar chart, running from 14.7 at Northgate to 11.1 at Westmoor.
The headline number: One key number block reads 11.0 hours, labelled as weekly contact above thirty cases, with the detail line giving the 14.1 hours below thirty, the 84 caseworkers and the twelve months of records the figure rests on.
What the curve means for a cap, and references: The discussion prices the marginal case at 8 minutes a week at 22 cases and 20 at 34, argues that a cap at 30 buys more contact per dollar than one at 25, and lists three limits of routine records. Four checked points and three references close the board.

What makes this board work

Three icon points set the question up

The top row pairs an icon with the question, the method and the result, so a reader knows within a few seconds whether this board is about them. The icons are structural rather than decorative: each one heads a column that continues below.

Two figures answer two different questions

The first shows contact falling across four caseload bands; the second shows it by office. Together they answer whether the pattern is about caseload or about where you work, which a single figure could not do.

The marginal case is the takeaway

The discussion converts the curve into something a manager can use: an extra case costs about 8 minutes a week at 22 cases and about 20 minutes at 34. That is the sentence a service uses to argue for a cap, and it comes straight off the figure.

Questions people ask

What goes on a social work research poster?

The service question, where the data came from, how many workers and clients it covers, the result with its denominator, and the limits of routine records. Practice audiences want the operational number, so put the hours or the rate on the board rather than only a coefficient.

Can I build a poster from routine records?

Yes, and it is often the only feasible design. State the limits where a reader will see them: this board says time records undercount, that caseloads are counted at month end, and that the two offices with the highest contact also have the lowest vacancy rates.

How many figures should a practice poster carry?

Two is usually right. One shows the relationship you are claiming and the other tests whether it holds across sites or groups. A third figure on an A0 portrait board tends to shrink all three below the size where a person standing a metre away can read the axis.

What font size should a poster use?

Body text on this board sits near 24 pixels on the 1656 by 2340 canvas, about 12 millimetres printed at A0, which reads at a metre. If you have more to say than fits at that size, cut the discussion rather than shrinking the type, because nobody reads 8 millimetre text standing up.

How long should the discussion be?

Long enough to say what the number means for practice and what would break it. This board gives the discussion the largest text block on the layout, roughly 250 words, split between the argument about where to set a cap and three limits of routine time records.

Can I change the icons on the key points?

Yes. Each icon is its own slot and can be swapped for another from the icon library, or given a different colour through the theme. The three icons here were chosen to head the question, the method and the result rather than to illustrate the subject.

Build your own in about a minute

The button below opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match your own, generate, then edit anything you like.

Make my social work research poster example

Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked 12 September 2026.