Volume 55, Issue 2, March 2025

Children who live in a family where there is violence may suffer long-term negative impacts that prevent them from living a full and happy life. Living in a family where there is violence is a form of child abuse, and child protection agencies have an obligation to ensure that children are safe. However, we know that many of the children who experience violence will live, for a short period of time, with their mothers in domestic and family violence (DFV) shelters. By reading case files, this research provides a glimpse of who the children are, their experiences, and the services they are provided by the DFV shelters. DFV shelters are only provided resources to respond to women but increasingly they provide ‘invisible work’ to make sure that children are also safe. It is important to understand the needs of children, the current services provided to them in DFV shelters, and the gaps in service provision so that we can make sure children receive adequate support and treatment to be safe and well.

This study explores the intersection of sexual well-being and disability as experienced by young people in their interactions with social workers. Despite the acknowledged necessity of risk-focused approaches in social work practices, young people expressed the need for a more balanced approach that emphasizes sex-positivity. Sexual well-being tends to be deprioritized in social work, despite its perceived close connection to mental and physical health. However, participants who engaged with private practitioners encountered a more client-centered and holistic approach, where the importance of sexual well-being was recognized. Young people perceived a correlation between professionals' attitudes towards sexual well-being and their comfort levels in discussing it. These attitudes and comfort levels were seen as crucial indicators of the integration of sexual well-being into a social worker's practice. Throughout interactions with social workers, young people faced stereotypes and common ableist myths, such as the misconception that sexual well-being is irrelevant to disabled individuals. Given the participants' varied experiences with multiple social workers, they were well-positioned to offer valuable insights and suggestions on how social workers can better support and enrich their journey towards achieving sexual well-being.

Children with social workers are more likely to be excluded from school than their peers. Using linked national data from the National Pupil Database for England, this study examined the factors associated with the likelihood of exclusion for children with social work involvement. The results showed that the exclusion gap was associated with differences in children’s presenting needs and the type of provision they received.

The study explores the perspectives of fifteen Arabs with three types of disabilities (physical, visual, and psychiatric) living in Israel regarding the facilitators they rely on to lead meaningful, independent, and dignified lives in an under-resourced environment. Applying the self-efficacy theory together with the ecological model, which focuses on individuals’ capacity to execute actions necessary to achieve a desired goal, the results indicate that Arabs with disabilities have more resources at the microsystem level, including the individual and family levels, rather than at the macro level. Participants developed strategies and skills to cope with the scarcity of these resources. Furthermore, this study reveals that the family plays a critical role in the cognitive development of their child with disabilities in three ways: first, by teaching the child that they are an equal part of society; secondly, by not limiting or restricting their responsibilities and life aspirations; and thirdly, by demanding their rights and resisting segregation, enabling them to broaden their horizons, gain experiences, and develop themselves. Findings were discussed in respect to social work practice.

This study used the data from the “China Social Work Longitudinal Study” and explored the role of political connection in explaining and predicting the policy advocacy of social work organizations in China. The findings of this study have confirmed the positive relationships between political connection and policy advocacy in social work organizations, in which the executives’ specialization plays positive moderating roles. The results of this study enrich the empirical research on social work policy practice and provide a reference for the debate on political connection and policy advocacy.

Innovation is now routinely presented as a solution to the pressures faced by social work services. However, we do not know enough about how effective innovations are developed and implemented. This article considers the case of Shared Lives (SL) schemes in English adult social care services to find out what we can learn about innovating. SL is an alternative model of care that matches adults who need support with self-employed carers willing to open-up their home and offer an ‘ordinary family life’. Most English local authorities (LAs) currently operate a SL scheme but the numbers of people supported and carers recruited remain small. Through interviews with fifty people, including carers, scheme staff, social workers, LA commissioners, and those involved in promoting SL, this article discusses why it has not been ‘scaled-up’ to the extent that many had hoped. We highlight the following areas that schemes need to address: (1) working closely with social workers; (2) leadership to promote SL; (3) knowledge and evidence of how to grow; (4) investment in scheme workers and carers. However, we also highlight budget constraints on LAs, and workload and cost of living pressures on carers, that may be harder to resolve.

In the four countries of the UK different bodies regulate social work and social care professionals. When there is a concern about the behaviour of a professional these regulators may rely on witnesses providing evidence at a public hearing—including service users, their families, wider publics, and sometimes colleagues. Each of the regulators address, in different legal and policy texts, whether a witness should be considered as vulnerable and/or steps that may be taken to enable them to give evidence, known as ‘special measures’. We considered how witness vulnerability and entitlement to special measures are constructed in these texts, as well as wider debates about how vulnerability is understood in social work, social welfare and regulatory contexts. We found that the regulators’ textual provisions can be too broad (when diverse groups of people are labelled as vulnerable in ways that remove agency and are stigmatizing) and too narrow (when texts overly focus on the attributes of individual witnesses and do not pay enough attention to how environmental factors may make people vulnerable, including the process of giving evidence). We call for a holistic textual approach to how witness vulnerability is framed in policy and law to better support witnesses.

Implementing family safeguarding in the context of Domestic Violence and Abuse: A case study of a local authority in England Background: Social care response to Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) focuses mostly on affected children, but family safeguarding also needs to include support for adult victims of abuse and challenge perpetrators. Aim of study: To explore how a Local Authority (LA) implemented ‘family safeguarding’ in the context of DVA across the social care system. Methods: Online interviews with 22 senior managers and frontline professionals working across the LA. Findings: The mechanisms used by the LA were (a) early help interventions led by professionals at the community level; (b) DVA training for professionals across social care; (c) funding of DVA specialist roles to work alongside professionals in children’s and adult social care and in the community. Outcomes for the LA: These mechanisms were felt to strengthen collaborative working across agencies (childrens social care, adult social care, housing, police) and informed funding decisions. Outcomes for families: DVA Specialists work with adult victims of abuse, affected children, and with low-risk perpetrators where possible. Implications for practice are that these approaches help link prevention and response, supported via DVA specialists in key roles across the LA.

This article seeks to discuss the findings generated from an empirical research project undertaken by the author in collaboration with four women with lived experiences as non-offending carers following the arrest of their respective partners for possessing CSAM. The research was conducted over the course of two years and sought to learn more about the women’s lived experiences of social work intervention and what their self-identified support needs were in the aftermath of their partner’s arrest. We used various creative research methods to tell participant stories including Photovoice, poetry, vignette and letter writing and we worked in collaboration to identify themes in the various data. This article specifically focuses on the themes generated from the written data (i.e. poetry, letters, and vignettes) as they were intended to communicate messages directly to social workers about their respective experiences.

Third-sector workers are essential contributors to the social care workforce. This research explored the experiences of third-sector support workers who are commissioned by local authorities to deliver interventions to children vulnerable to exploitation. Eight support workers recruited from a charitable organization in England took part in semi-structured interviews. The research found that participants face similar challenges as the regulated social work workforce, such as managing their emotions while in practice. The research found that participants experienced tensions of autonomy, which was understood as empowering on one hand, but resulted in loneliness and not always feel supported, on the other. Of note was the finding that participants felt at risk when transporting children, even though this practice was understood as part of the role and a facilitator of engagement. Whether regulated or otherwise, it is necessary for stakeholders to adopt a shared risk approach to understand and manage risks in all social care provisions, promote connections between employees, and provide emotional assistance to support positive psychological well-being.

Migrant ethnic minority women are particularly affected by the shortcomings in perinatal mental health service provision despite, in many instances, their already having experienced issues relating to displacement, stigma, racism, and related social inequalities. With a specific focus on the Republic of Ireland, this article examines responses to this group of women and aims to explore underpinning factors of structurally generated discriminatory treatment. In this context, we draw on practitioner accounts

Social workers match children who need a foster home with an appropriate foster family. This article investigates what factors that social workers consider important when they do the matching through reading 116 matching investigations. The result shows that in most cases, social workers write a general description that would describe basic needs of any child. In their assessment, they focus on the basic needs of being able to provide shelter, food, a room for the child and time for homework. The specific needs of the child are presented when a child has a medical diagnosis or a challenging behaviour that can affect the family. It is also evident that the social worker responsible for matching often does not meet with the child and therefore the wishes and needs as expressed by the child is not considered in the matching. Implications for practice are discussed concerning the need to meet with the child to give the child the possibility to give their view on what is important concerning a life in a foster family. Also, the specific needs of the child should be investigated.

A decade after the International Federation of Social Workers introduced a revised Global Definition (GDSW), researchers interviewed sixty-five social workers to compare practicing social workers’ definitions of the profession to the concepts outlined in the GDSW. Social workers’ views aligned with the GDSW, but there were tensions around its macro-orientation. To address these, the researchers propose small amendments to the definition to better integrate the GDSW with on-the-ground priorities.

For decades, defining professional identity in social work has been a challenging exercise. Our article is the first to offer a new and comprehensive definition of professional identity for social work. We produced our definition by undertaking a scoping literature review to explore how professional identity has been defined, theorized, and measured in social work since 1999. Our review process produced sixty-six peer-reviewed articles for analysis. Most of the articles were empirical studies that had used qualitative methods to explore professional identity. Many of the articles were conducted in China and Western countries. Thematic analysis was undertaken, and four interconnecting themes emerged from the definitions of professional identity related to socialization, shared characteristics, professional structures, and feelings of belonging and commitment. These themes form the basis of our proposed definition of professional identity in social work and demonstrate how professional identity is a multidimensional concept. We conclude our article by outlining opportunities for future research that incorporates this definition, especially for studies that compare professional identities across different countries. Our work brings much needed clarity to a contested area by improving how professional identity is defined in social work, which has implications for social work associations, educators, practitioners, and research.

This scoping review examined studies written about LGBTQIA+ migrants in the social work field from 1994 to 2024. Findings suggest the literature is skewed towards health and mental health as topics, qualitative methods, and the Global North as the location of the first authors and research sites. Regarding migrant identities, economic migrants receive more academic attention, compared with migrants in vulnerable positionalities, such as refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants. Regarding sexual and gender identities, most studies focus on men who have sex with men, followed by individuals with gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities. Also, there has been immense diversification in identities, increasing from six to thirty-one to eighty-six sexual and gender identities examined in the literature over the last three decades. Findings point to the need for an intersectional lens in social work practice and research with LGBTQIA+ migrants.