This critical systematic review analyses empirical social work research in Chile from 2017 to 2024. It aims to identify the addressed topics, epistemological debates, theoretical frameworks or models applied, and research methodologies. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, the review draws on the Web of Science, Scopus and Scientific Electronic Library Online databases. A total of 25 articles met the inclusion criteria. Findings show a thematic concentration on health, childhood and public policy. There is limited epistemological debate and a lack of clarity in or an absence of the use of theoretical frameworks. Quantitative studies using questionnaires predominate, followed by qualitative approaches. The review concludes that a persistent disconnection remains between epistemology, theory and social intervention, hindering the consolidation of disciplinary knowledge. This weakens the critical articulation between research and practice. The review highlights the need to strengthen the theoretical–practical relationship in future social work research as a means of fostering epistemic resistance and enhancing the discipline’s transformative and critical potential.
This article examines how historical, structural and spatial conditions shape social work practice and the engagement of older people in a post-Soviet context, focusing on the north-eastern Estonian town of Sillam & auml;e. In Ida-Viru County, where approximately 80 per cent of the population is Russian speaking, the legacies of Soviet industrialisation, post-Soviet transition and geopolitical tension continue to influence local governance, community relations and everyday social work practice. Drawing on qualitative interviews with six social workers and five regional policy makers, the article analyses how engagement is conceptualised and enacted in practice. The findings reveal a pronounced gap between national strategies that emphasise participation, co-creation and active citizenship and the local realities, where engagement is largely confined to informational inclusion and individual service provision. Collective and community-based approaches remain limited, while linguistic stratification, peripheral funding regimes and securitised governance logics constrain meaningful participation. The article argues that engagement in peripheral post-socialist contexts is less a matter of individual motivation than of institutional architecture and underscores the need for context-sensitive, structurally informed approaches that enable older residents to exercise substantive influence over local decision making.
Predictive analytics are increasingly embedded in children’s social care, often without adequate scrutiny of their assumptions, accuracy or social consequences. While racialised harms from criminal justice algorithms are well documented in the US, concerns in social work remain underexplored. Models trained on data from unequal systems risk reproducing or intensifying existing social gradients. This scoping review maps empirical research on predictive analytics in children’s services. From 5,393 records, 37 studies meet the inclusion criteria. Using O’Neil’s framework of opacity, scale and damage, we examine how algorithms are developed, operationalised and reported. Interest is growing in using predictive tools for resource allocation, service design, risk screening and decision support. However, most models lack transparency, provide limited information on development or error rates, and rarely examine algorithmic bias or the harms of false positives. Many studies anticipate rapid scale-up using linked data sets, raising significant concerns about governance, consent and accountability.
The Spanish Parliament was recently in the public spotlight for adopting the inclusion of antigypsyism as a specific form of hate crime in the Criminal Code and setting into motion the drafting of a state pact against antigypsyism. We draw on ten years of experience in research and community mediation in Madrid to measure the first impact of the politicisation of antigypsyism on social work practices. We find that gatekeeping occurs on two levels: (1) practitioners, most of whom work in districts with high Romani representation, block data collection on the ground, as they ‘do not work with those populations’; and (2) when they do show interest in improving the situation, they overwhelmingly support the relegation of Romani professionals to isolated mediator roles within small civil society organisations rather than hiring them within public structures. We note, however, a timid movement towards self-reflexivity and a willingness to address racial bias.
Colonial representations of Salvadorian, Guatemalan, Honduran and Nicaraguan women have long shaped global perceptions of the region, particularly in development, humanitarianism and social work. This article reflects on how these portrayals sustain archetypes of white womanhood embedded in foundational understandings of gender-based violence within social work. Drawing on a collaborative project involving Canada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua that co-created knowing using the Testimonio methodology, and thinking about activism and resistance, we analyse how colonial ideologies continue to underpin Western imaginaries of Central America. Using the framework of the coloniality of gender, we show how social work enacts saviourism through tropes that cast Central American women as servants or enemies in need of rescue or containment. These racialised, gendered images erase colonial histories and legitimise the West’s ongoing role as moral authority and saviour. Despite decolonial and anti-oppressive shifts, social work practice remains entangled with these colonial forms of ‘helping’.
Social work education has long relied on the framework of seven "isms"-racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism and youth oppression, and religious oppression-to prepare students for justice-oriented practice. While foundational, this framework is insufficient to capture contemporary exclusions. Drawing on Young's five faces of oppression, Bell's features of oppression, and Collins's domains of power, this article develops a holistic framework that expands the canon to nine "isms" through the inclusion of nativism and linguicism. A secondary scan of 79 peer-reviewed articles (2020-25) reveals that while racism, classism, and sexism dominate, nativism and linguicism are nearly absent. This silence is not incidental but evidence of normalization, confirming Bell's and Collins's insights on hegemonic reproduction. The omission risks reinforcing exclusions that disproportionately affect immigrant and multilingual populations. Expanding to nine "isms" is both a conceptual refinement and an ethical imperative for radical, justice-oriented social work education.
This article creates a psychosocial theoretical framework to re-evaluate social work practice in the context of bureaucratised systems driven by the audited management of data. The demoralising working conditions in the profession have been well established by empirical studies and critical literature. Responding to this cue from the front line, the article argues that creative and critical thinking can illuminate the contradictions inherent in neoliberal organisations. The location of creativity in child protection social work is presented as a necessary challenge to the formal characteristics of bureaucracy. Through a reading of Franz Kafka’s The Trial , the article constructs an interpretative framework to interrogate the structural conditions of social work. Working in dialogue with psychoanalysis, the article develops this thinking to devise creative forms of practice with mandated parents. The article is driven by critical analysis, creative engagement and reflection, creating bridges between theory and practice.
Adriana Smith's legacy-that of a Black woman whose body was exploited and stripped of reproductive autonomy-is reflective of centuries-long abuse, experimentation, and violation of the principles of reproductive justice that are discussed and promoted in this commentary. The authors apply these principles to Smith's case within a broader legal and historical context and provide suggestions for social workers to advance reproductive justice in public advocacy and graduate education.
This commentary responds to the revised 2017 sex work legislation aligned with neo-abolitionist radical feminist views and the care-surveillance dichotomy in social work. The critique is used to expose the challenges educators face in prioritising competency-based curricula over critical perspectives. Emphasising critical debate in classrooms equips students with essential skills to interrogate legislation that pathologises sex workers and other marginalised populations in order to promote a more just and informed social work practice.
This article offers a critical interrogation of the discourse of "hope" as it is widely promoted in social work and psychotherapy. While often framed as a benevolent or necessary component of healing, the deployment of hope within dominant therapeutic paradigms can unintentionally reproduce neoliberal, white hegemonic, cisnormative, and ableist assumptions. Drawing from queer theory, feminist critique, and narrative therapy, this article explores how hope discourses can function as a subtle form of regulation, placing the burden of hope and "future orientation" on clients navigating racism, trans oppression, and other forms of systemic violence. This article incorporates critical social work scholarship, political theories of hope, and narrative-informed practices. Particular attention is paid to the impact on trans clients in the current political climate, where trans lives are under increasing legislative attack. Rather than offering generic or decontextualized hope, the article proposes alternative narrative-informed practices that honor complexity, resistance, and collective care over individual positivity.
This article argues that recent advances in critical theory, particularly the resonance concept developed by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa, offer a philosophical framework of relevance for the emerging field of green social work. Even though Rosa's scholarship remains undiscovered in this context, his conception of the good life as built on resonant relationships offers insights I discuss throughout the article in relation to (1) diagnosis, (2) implications for practice and (3) institutional reform. Specifically, Rosa's work offers a promising lens to examine social and psychological pathology in modern societies, pointing towards the need to remedy disengaged modes of existence marked by a loss of relations of intrinsic value and meaning. As such, the concepts of alienation, acceleration and autoaggression provide a critical framework for understanding the wider contexts that frame subjects' life strategies under neoliberal capitalism, characterised by dysfunctional, disconnected ways of relating to the world and intensifying damage to the biosphere.
Professional identity constitutes a fundamental element of social work practice, as it is directly linked to the empowerment of the social worker's role, professional motivation, commitment to the profession and personal satisfaction derived from practising that role. This article explores how social work practice within the framework of local government influences the development and formation of social workers' professional identity. The analysis demonstrates that social work practice is profoundly shaped by the social, political and economic structures that define its context. Within this framework, an empirical study was conducted to document and analyse the perceptions of social workers employed in the social services of local government organisations in the Attica region regarding the factors that affect their professional identity and role in the contemporary work environment.
This commentary asks what the French Revolution can teach social work about practicing ethics amid democratic unravelling in the contemporary US. Using historical comparative political analysis grounded in deontological and intersectional lenses, ittraces parallels between revolutionary France and current struggles over security, dissent, and civil liberties. The article argues that institutional risk aversion and political repression are pushing social workers in academia, child welfare, and community nonprofits toward complicity. While the code of ethics of the National Association of Social Workers names professional duties, the manifesto of the Social Work Action Network and the Dubrovnik Manifesto illustrate how to collectivize them in practice. The article proposes seven evidence-informed strategies as a roadmap for democratic, justice-oriented practice: protected ethical consultation and supervision; advocacy networks; creative and covert resistance; documentation of harm; practices that sustain worker well-being; decision making grounded in radicaltheory; and community-led action. The social work profession must function as an organized democratic resistance.
This article responds to the call of the special issue of Critical and Radical Social Work for critical reflection on the role of power and social control within social work. We examine the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into social work in Lithuania, the UK and Spain, with particular attention to the risks of deepening historical patterns of surveillance, paternalism and marginalisation. This raises a central research question: do AI-driven tools genuinely enhance efficiency, or do they risk reinforcing structural inequalities and expanding the surveillance of already-vulnerable groups? A Delphi study conducted with social work and AI experts in the three countries reveals that despite the rhetoric of modernisation and efficiency, AI is often embedded within institutional frameworks that have long histories of punitive and exclusionary practices. The introduction of AI in this context raises significant questions about the profession's ability to resist further entrenchment in a bureaucratic, control-oriented model.
This article presents findings from a study that interrogated the experiences of social service providers who support return migrants in Kosova. Relying on a postcolonial framework and using critical discourse analysis, the study aimed to elucidate whether social workers who serve return migrants uphold their commitment to social justice. This focus responds to current literature suggesting that social workers often become part of a system that silences and marginalises return migrants. Indeed, findings corroborate existing literature, suggesting that social workers in Kosova are aware of the challenges faced by returnees, especially those who are forced to return. However, they also place the burden of repatriation on returnees themselves, ultimately blaming them for the challenges of repatriation. Challenging these discourses, the article argues that social workers need to build transnational solidarities to question current constructions of repatriation as voluntary and offer return migrants choices.
The US is experiencing a wave of legislation seeking to limit the rights and autonomy of transgender and nonbinary (TNB) people across multiple domains, even attempting to cease the legal recognition of TNB people altogether. Social work is committed to social justice. However, the profession has been largely silent in the face of these legislative attacks. This article utilizes an anonymous survey to examine social work educators' understanding of this legislation and the profession's role in response. The vast majority of respondents believe the profession, including professional organizations (95 percent, n = 155) and schools (93 percent, n = 153), has an ethical duty to act. Concrete strategies are needed to guide schools of social work in addressing cis-supremacist legislation within the classroom, as well as at the local, state, and national levels. We call on social work's professional organizations to denounce cis-supremacy, collaborate on an evidence-informed statement, and call members to action.
The Roma represent one of the most vulnerable social groups in Switzerland, with Eastern European Roma migrants who have fled extreme poverty and social exclusion in their home countries being particularly at risk. Various Swiss cantons have adopted hostile political measures and institutional practices aimed at combating so-called 'welfare tourism' and discouraging Roma migrants from accessing public spaces and welfare services. These measures include punitive actions, legal criminalisation, restricted service access, detention and deportation. Despite this, there are also federal, cantonal and municipal initiatives that provide meaningful support to the Roma community. This article explores the specific vulnerabilities faced by impoverished, mobile Roma individuals in Switzerland and critically examines how Swiss welfare structures respond to these challenges. Furthermore, it highlights the role of social work within this ambivalent and often contradictory system.
