t show & tells. These conversations contextualised the findings and helped to align them with practice. Key message 1: Record keeping is an essential part of ‘good’ social work Links to theme 1, theme 2, theme 4 There was a consensus between all participants, regardless of role or responsibility, that record keeping is an essential part of ‘good’ social work practice. Participants acknowledged that forms support the ability to understand a child/young person’s journey through care and the relationships they have, both with those involved in the CSC system and beyond. All the data and information collected on the forms was considered helpful by practitioners or by somebody else in the LA. Although they could see the value of the data and information, a perceived challenge was the length of time it takes to complete all the necessary data items across all the relevant forms. Understanding the recording burden on social workers is, therefore, not as straightforward as looking at the volume of data and information that they have to record. Recommendations for DfE:  The DfE’s Improving CSC CMS project team should explore further the end-to-end process to better understand the recording burdens faced by social work practitioners. Look at the whole CSC ‘ecosystem’, including forms and workflows and: o Undertake high level service design activity, mapping out user journeys and visualising what happens in practice o Enable user-centred design practices to explore the CSC space. For example, as part of service design, explore user groups and their associated needs to visualise similarities and differences  Provide opportunities and facilitate regional working groups to enable LAs to collaborate and share knowledge to establish what good practice looks like regardless of the CMS