Elder abuse among older adults with disabilities is a critically underreported issue, particularly in low-resource settings like Zimbabwe. This qualitative study explores the barriers to reporting abuse among elderly persons with disabilities in Harare District and examines implications for social work practice. While global literature addresses prevalence and risk factors, few studies explore how abuse is experienced and interpreted by older adults with disabilities. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), we conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 participants (aged 62–87), identified through a local rights-based organization. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed four main barriers: (1) silence as a form of control, (2) absence of a rights-based language, (3) emotional and social isolation, and (4) internalized powerlessness. Silence emerged as a strategic response to invisibility, dependency, and lack of support. Findings suggest that social work interventions must move beyond awareness to culturally responsive, relational approaches that create emotional safety and trust. Reporting should not be viewed as a goal but as a process requiring trust, alternative care options, and emotional safety. Social workers must learn to listen not only to spoken words but to silences that carry meaning.
Domestic violence is a widespread human rights concern with substantial physical, psychological, and social consequences for women worldwide, including in Iran. Understanding how survivors experience and cope with domestic violence is essential for developing culturally appropriate support interventions. This qualitative study employed a descriptive phenomenological approach to explore the lived experiences and coping strategies of women who had experienced domestic violence. Participants were selected through purposive sampling from women with a history of domestic violence who had sought assistance from family courts and counseling centers in Tehran in 2023. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method. The analysis revealed three main themes: living with constant fear, threat, and helplessness; living with persistent financial hardship; and gaining independence as a pathway toward coping with domestic violence. The findings indicated that psychological counseling, reducing economic dependence, participation in empowerment programs, pursuing employment, accessing forensic and legal services, and seeking legal support were important strategies that helped women regain a sense of autonomy and manage the challenges associated with domestic violence. These findings highlight the importance of strengthening psychological, economic, and legal support systems to enhance safety, empowerment, and well-being among women experiencing domestic violence.
Intimate partner violence frequently intersects with mental health and substance use, shaping the support needs of survivors and the practices of direct service workers, including social workers who constitute a core and consistently represented professional group. These intersecting survivor needs are shaped by trauma, stigma, and structural inequities, demonstrating the importance of responses grounded in human rights and trauma- and violence-informed practice. Despite social workers’ central involvement, knowledge about how direct service workers experience and respond to survivors' intersecting needs remains conceptually dispersed and limited. This article outlines a structured protocol for a forthcoming scoping review, guided by human rights and trauma- and violence-informed approaches, to examine research on direct service workers’ experiences, including social workers, support survivors navigating intimate partner violence, mental health needs, and substance use. The protocol will map available evidence and identify conceptual and practical gaps related to intimate partner violence direct service workers’ experiences. By situating this work within human rights and trauma- and violence-informed framing, the article highlights the need for integrated and equity-oriented responses across social work and community service sectors. Insights from the planned review may inform social work practice development, strengthen organizational and policy supports for direct service workers, and guide educational efforts that prepare social workers for the complexities of intersecting intimate partner violence, mental health, and substance use. This protocol contributes emerging knowledge by articulating the rationale, conceptual foundations, and methodological approach for examining direct service workers’ experiences. The planned review will support the development of social work practice, policy, and education aimed at improving survivor-centered and equitable service responses.
Human rights are a foundational principle of social work education, yet empirical evidence on student engagement with human rights frameworks remains limited. This study replicates Witt’s (2020) examination of human rights endorsement among U.S. social work students in a post–COVID-19 context, using the 25-item Human Rights Engagement in Social Work (HRESW) scale. Survey data were collected from 195 MSW and upper-division BSW students enrolled in practicum placements at a private university in the Northeast. Consistent with Witt’s findings, students demonstrated high overall endorsement of core human rights principles. Contrary to Witt’s results, which found higher endorsement among upper-division BSW and graduate students compared with lower-division BSWs, this study revealed higher endorsement among upper-division BSWs than MSWs. Consistent with Witt’s findings, no major significant differences emerged in overall HRESW scores or by program modality. These results suggest that human rights engagement may be most strongly shaped during early professional socialization and practicum exposure rather than increasing linearly across educational levels. The study implies that social work education should more intentionally integrate human rights content across curricula and practicum settings, rather than assuming engagement will increase with educational advancement or modality alone.
Immigration enforcement in the USA increasingly intrudes into schools, health care facilities, and social service settings, creating ethical conflicts for social workers whose professional obligations center dignity, justice, and well-being. This article advances a conceptual framework for sanctuary social work, a practice paradigm that integrates social work ethics, human rights principles, and applied resistance to harmful state practices. Drawing on the NASW Code of Ethics, human rights scholarship, and empirical research on the impacts of immigration enforcement, the article argues that ethical neutrality is untenable when enforcement practices systematically undermine access to health care, education, family unity, and community participation. Using the Grand Challenges for Social Work as an analytic lens, the article demonstrates how aggressive enforcement exacerbates health disparities, social isolation, and racial injustice. The framework emphasizes three interconnected domains of action: adaptive service design to reduce risk and maintain access, proactive connection to legal resources and rights-based information, and interdisciplinary advocacy and legal engagement. Recent developments, including lawsuits filed by educators and advocacy by health care professionals, illustrate opportunities for cross-professional action. Sanctuary social work is presented as an ethically required orientation that repositions resistance, protection, and collective accountability as core components of professional practice in the mass deportation era.
The urgent need for sustainable energy transitions in emerging economies has intensified the intersection between environmental and social challenges, reinforcing environmental rights as integral to human rights. This study presents an empirical investigation into the awareness and practice of green social work among Indian social workers and their role in promoting environmental sustainability. A cross-sectional electronic survey was conducted among 118 professional social workers across India. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 20 (Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis H tests), while qualitative responses were examined through thematic analysis. The findings reveal a significant awareness gap, with only 21.2
Lymphatic filariasis (LF), a mosquito-borne disease, causes severe physical morbidity, social stigma, and psychological distress, perpetuating a cycle of poverty. While the existing patient care system in LF primarily focuses on managing clinical conditions, the significant psychosocial needs of patients often go neglected. The current support system, largely driven by medical professionals, typically lacks the training and mandate to address these non-clinical needs. Despite progress in combating LF, social workers remain underutilized, especially in high-endemic regions like India, due to undefined roles and insufficient integration into existing care frameworks. The challenges faced by lymphedema patients in India are fundamentally rooted in human rights issues, as they frequently encounter barriers to accessing essential healthcare needs—basic rights that should be guaranteed to all individuals. Hence, addressing these challenges requires a rights-based approach. This paper emphasizes the need to integrate social work into LF patient care in India, identifying current gaps and future intervention opportunities. By developing a rights-based framework, we define the roles of social workers in lymphedema care, enabling them to become proactive partners in ongoing lymphedema care. Through understanding challenges from a rights-based lens, creating personalized care strategies, empowering patients, and fostering community collaboration and advocacy, social workers can significantly improve long-term care outcomes and enhance the quality of life for patients.
This study examines the exploitation of migrant workers in Malaysia’s construction industry, focusing on its types, underlying causes, and potential reform pathways. Despite the documented prevalence of migrant worker exploitation in this sector, qualitative evidence specific to the construction sector, drawing on both worker experiences and institutional perspectives, remains limited, and reform pathways have not been closely examined. A qualitative research design was adopted using semi-structured interviews with four strategically selected participants: two migrant construction workers, one Immigration Department officer, and one representative from the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM). The data were analysed using thematic analysis supported by ATLAS.ti. Based on the accounts of the four participants, the findings indicate that the exploitation reported is multidimensional and includes wage theft, unsafe working conditions, excessive working hours, passport retention, debt bondage, discrimination, and poor living conditions, with debt bondage reported as an institutional observation rather than a direct worker-reported experience. These practices are driven by structural economic, institutional, and social factors within the labour system that restrict access to redress. Participants also identified several potential solutions, including fair wage enforcement, improved workplace safety, regulated working hours, transparent recruitment practices, expanded access to healthcare and legal services, community integration, and technological mechanisms for accountability. By integrating worker experiences with institutional perspectives, the study demonstrates how structural conditions enable labour exploitation in Malaysia’s construction industry and identifies practical reform pathways for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and civil society.
This scoping review maps qualitative research on user participation in social housing work and practices for people with mental health and/or substance use challenges in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. User participation has become a central value in Nordic welfare states, promoted to strengthen empowerment, improving services, and reinforce democratic ideals. While Nordic countries share features, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden represent the core of the Social Democratic welfare regime, providing a coherent basis for comparative analysis of housing policies and practices. Drawing on studies published between 2015 and 2025, this review identifies how user participation is conceptualized and enacted across individual, service, and system levels. Eleven included studies show that user participation extends beyond formal service plans and is embedded in everyday relationships, residents’ degree of control, and opportunities for co-production. Practices fostering meaningful user participation include relational continuity, flexible routines, recovery- and citizenship-oriented perspectives, and collaboration with user organizations. Yet user participation is limited by organizational mandates, professional ideas of “suitable housing”, and structural pressures. Ongoing tensions between care and control, plans and lived realities, and provision and user participation shape frontline practice. Across contexts, people with mental health and/or substance use challenges remain stigmatized and marginalized, often excluded from genuine influence over housing and services. The findings underscore the need for approaches that translate universalist welfare principles and human rights commitments into concrete practices supporting housing stability, quality of life, and social inclusion.
Armed conflict profoundly disrupts the realization of the right to education in conflict-affected settings. This study examines post-war education recovery in Tigray following the 2020–2022 conflict, focusing on education disruption as a human security failure, legal and policy frameworks governing education recovery, and recovery strategies for sustainable education reconstruction. An exploratory qualitative research design was employed. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with key informants drawn from UN agencies, international and national NGOs, regional education authorities, school principals, teachers, students, parents, and community members, complemented by document analysis. Thematic analysis was used to interpret patterns across education disruption, legal and policy frameworks, and recovery strategies. Findings reveal that education collapse was characterized by extensive institutional destruction, human resource depletion, psychosocial trauma, and governance fragmentation, producing a multidimensional human security crisis in which education institutions lost their protective and stabilizing functions. Although national and international legal frameworks provide a strong normative foundation for the right to education, their implementation was constrained by limited institutional capacity, fragmented governance structures, and resource shortages. Education recovery strategies, including teacher rehabilitation, community-led school reconstruction, inclusive education programming, psychosocial support initiatives, and humanitarian-government coordination, have enabled partial restoration of schools but remain insufficient for equitable and sustainable recovery. Advancing education recovery as peace infrastructure operating through a dynamic interaction between human security stabilization, social reconstruction, and human capital renewal, the study recommends coordinated interventions that simultaneously restore protection, rebuild social cohesion, and strengthen long-term development capacity. The study contributes to scholarship on human rights, post-conflict reconstruction, and education recovery in fragile contexts.
Migration is a multidimensional social phenomenon that significantly affects individuals' lives. While the social work discipline approaches this phenomenon based on human rights and social justice, metaphors offer a powerful tool for understanding individuals’ cognitive representations and professional perceptions of the migration process. This study aims to examine how social workers make sense of the concept of migration based on their professional experiences through metaphorical expressions. Using the phenomenological design, a qualitative research method, 30 social workers were asked to generate metaphors related to the concepts of migration, migrant, war, social work, and human rights. The data were analyzed through content analysis. The findings reveal that social workers predominantly conceptualize migration in terms of necessity, uncertainty, destruction, and new beginnings. Moreover, social workers with direct field experience in migration tend to produce metaphors emphasizing adaptation and transformation, whereas those without such experience use metaphors reflecting trauma and destruction. The results indicate that professional experience shapes the perception of migration and that these perceptions are reflected in social work practices.
Social workers play a crucial role in upholding the human rights of people with dementia, balancing their well-being and safety with the preservation of their autonomy and dignity. In times of war, this balance becomes even more challenging as considerations of protection and security may override these rights, leading to paternalistic interventions. This article examines an ethical dilemma that arises when individuals with dementia, living in high-risk areas, resist evacuation during war. To address this issue, we propose a decision-making model. Firstly, it emphasizes autonomy by considering the individual’s decision-making capacity, advance directives, and pre-dementia preferences. Secondly, it respects dignity by advocating for the fulfillment of their wishes even without decision-making capacity. Thirdly, the framework incorporates utilitarian considerations, prioritizing overall well-being and protection from harm. Fourthly, it accounts for legal variations across countries that may prioritize these principles differently. Finally, it considers relevant intervention methods for social workers. This model can serve as a practical tool for social workers to navigate such ethical dilemmas methodically. Furthermore, it can be adapted to address similar situations involving adults with dementia in the context of natural disasters and other crises.
This article critically examines India’s legal framework governing sex work through a human rights lens. Analysis of statutes and case law reveals that the Indian state fails to fulfill its positive obligations due to inadequate legislative frameworks and discriminatory enforcement. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act fails to distinguish between voluntary sex work and exploitation (Section 2(f)), creating a legal paradox wherein consensual adult sex work cannot exist within the statutory framework. The absence of explicit legal recognition violates fundamental rights by failing to establish adequate legal protections required under the state’s positive obligations. The article demonstrates four interlocking deficiencies: statutory failure to recognize consent, treating all commercial sexual activity as exploitation regardless of consent; contradictory criminalization, wherein prostitution is ostensibly legal yet surrounding activities are prohibited; judicial inconsistency with contradictory judicial rulings enabling arbitrary enforcement; and a consent framework void, providing no mechanism to distinguish voluntary from involuntary sex work. Empirical evidence from sex worker collectives documents systematic police harassment, with substantial majorities of women in anti-trafficking raids voluntarily engaged in sex work. Comparative legal analysis demonstrates that full decriminalization correlates with demonstrable violence reduction and improved health outcomes, while partial criminalization and heavy regulation create enforcement inconsistencies. Drawing from international human rights principles and comparative analysis, the article advocates a paradigm shift from the current framework treating all sex work as exploitative toward a rights-based approach emphasizing decriminalization, anti-discrimination protections, and constitutional alignment to uphold sex workers’ rights to equality, dignity, and justice.
Social work practice in rural and remote First Nations communities in Australia occurs within a complex intersection of structural inequality, historical and ongoing colonisation, and chronic service delivery constraints. Despite national commitments to reconciliation, Closing the Gap, and culturally safe practice, First Nations peoples living outside metropolitan centres continue to experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, chronic disease, housing insecurity, educational disengagement, child removal, and incarceration. These inequities are most acute in the Northern Territory, where most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in remote or very remote locations. This paper critically examines social work practice in marginalised rural and remote First Nations communities, with particular attention to how policy-driven service models interact with Indigenous social and emotional wellbeing frameworks. Drawing on contemporary literature and practice-based experience, the paper analyses the structural determinants shaping Indigenous wellbeing, limitations in social work’s professional response, and the tensions inherent in externally designed interventions. A detailed programme profile of the Remote Family Support Services (RFSS) program operating in the Barkly and West Arnhem regions illustrates both the possibilities and constraints of culturally responsive, trauma-informed practice embedded within government funding frameworks. The analysis demonstrates that, while relational, strengths-based approaches grounded in Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation (ACCHO) partnerships can produce meaningful short-term improvements in family wellbeing, sustainable change remains constrained by workforce instability, short-term funding, and unresolved structural inequities. The paper argues that advancing social justice in remote contexts requires not only individual practitioner competence but also a fundamental shift towards Indigenous self-determination in programme design, governance, and evaluation.
India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1992 and thereby committed itself to safeguarding children’s rights through the framework of decentralized governance. Within this framework, the District Child Protection Units (DCPUs) function as the nodal agencies for child protection at the district level, operating under the Department of Women and Child Development (WCD) in alignment with the guidelines of Mission Vatsalaya. Against this backdrop, the present study seeks to explore how child rights are protected at the local level through the functioning of DCPUs in the state of Kerala in India. The study employs a qualitative research design and purposive sampling to collect data from 20 respondents across eight DCPUs in Kerala. Thematic analysis of the in-depth interviews conducted revealed three major themes: child rights in action, right to know, and transform and challenges in child protection. Findings of the study revealed the importance of collaborative networking of various stakeholders at the grassroots level for child rights protection, giving more focus to sensitization of primary caregivers. Furthermore, it identifies key areas requiring structural reforms to strengthen the functioning of DCPU in its efforts to protect children’s rights.
Social work is a values-driven profession with explicit commitments to human dignity, social justice, and the protection of human rights. Simultaneously, ideological diversity within the profession has generated ongoing debate, particularly regarding the role of political conservatism in social work practice. While prior scholarship has examined how conservative and neoliberal ideologies shape social policy and service systems, there remains limited empirical research exploring how conservative political beliefs influence direct social work practice. This exploratory qualitative study conducted in the U.S.A. examined the experiences and perspectives of social workers who identify as politically conservative. Fifteen U.S.-based licensed social workers participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews that were analyzed using a grounded theory approach informed by critical qualitative methods. Critical analysis was applied to how beliefs and attitudes intersected with professional values and ethical practice standards. Findings revealed four overarching themes: (1) conceptualizations of empowerment rooted in traditional values, (2) lack of support for social safety net programs, (3) value conflicts in client interactions, and (4) negative attitudes impacting professional practice behaviors. Participants described beliefs emphasizing individual responsibility, discipline, and self-reliance, which at times conflicted with established social work values and human rights commitments, particularly in work with marginalized populations. The findings illustrate how political ideology can shape clinical judgment, client engagement, and access to affirming care. Implications are discussed for social work practice, supervision, education, and policy, with particular attention to the role of reflective practice and human rights frameworks in addressing ideological bias.
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, is a pivotal legal framework in India aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse. Despite its comprehensive scope, the medico-legal implementation of the Act presents several challenges for healthcare providers, law enforcement, and the judiciary, especially in ensuring sensitive yet legally sound handling of child survivors. Objectives were to analyze key medico-legal challenges in the implementation of POCSO, with a focus on forensic examination, evidence collection, consent, mandatory reporting, and the role of medical professionals in legal proceedings. A qualitative review of secondary data was conducted using statutory provisions of the POCSO Act, government-issued medico-legal guidelines, peer-reviewed journals, judicial decisions, and policy reports from organizations such as Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of Govt. of India, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and HAQ: Centre for Child Rights during January to June 2024. Thematic analysis was used to identify core issues. Five major themes emerged from the analysis: Training deficiencies–medical professionals often lacked formal training in child-sensitive forensic procedures under POCSO. Consent and confidentiality challenges–ethical dilemmas were frequent regarding assent, parental consent, and mandatory reporting. Documentation and evidence integrity–poor-quality medico-legal documentation compromised evidentiary value in court. Infrastructure gaps–most facilities lacked child-friendly spaces and essential forensic equipment. Legal preparedness–doctors were inadequately oriented for courtroom roles, affecting the quality of expert testimony. Effective implementation of POCSO’s medico-legal provisions requires improved training, intersectoral coordination, standardized protocols, and infrastructure development. Bridging the gap between medical ethics and legal obligations is essential to ensure justice while preserving the dignity and rights of child survivors.
The use of coercive practices worsens recovery processes in mental health. These practices have various forms of presentation that must be identified to incorporate a rights-based approach into care processes. The aim was to describe and analyze the reasons perceived by physicians who employed coercive practices and by the individuals on whom these practices were employed, following a suicide attempt in Caldas, Colombia, in 2023 and 2024. A qualitative, transversal, and descriptive research design was used. Data collection was conducted in two phases: in-depth interviews with individuals who had attempted suicide were carried out between January and December 2024, and interviews with healthcare professionals were conducted between November 2024 and January 2025. A total of 30 participants were included, all of whom had attempted suicide and for whom coercive measures had been taken at a clinical level. In addition, 22 medical professionals who treated one of the 30 participants during their suicide attempt were included. Through content analysis, the interviews were divided into two themes. The first, based on interviews with individuals who had attempted suicide, was titled Reasons perceived by people using health services after a suicide attempt and comprised three categories: Lack of knowledge, Lack of willingness to help, and Obligation. The second theme, Reasons perceived by medical professionals, comprised categories such as Coercion as a primary resource, Coercion in medical training, and Coercion as medical protocol. Coercive measures, even though they are protocolled by health professionals, cause great suffering and hinder the recovery of people who have experienced coercive practices in mental health.
In the current geopolitical landscape, undocumented migrants are increasingly illegalised and excluded from rights, policies, and services aimed at guaranteeing an acceptable standard of living for legal residents (Ataç Rosenberger, Journal of Immigrant Refugee Studies 17(1): 1–10, 2019). At heart, this implies that undocumented people are cast out of the ‘common humanity’ to whom a dignified life is owed. Not only is this fundamentally at odds with the promise of — presumably — universal and inalienable human rights (Noll, European Journal of Migration and Law 12(2): 241–272, 2010), but it also challenges the national basis of social work (Bartley Beddoe, Transnational social work, 2018). Within this repressive context, others have previously warned that social work can become complicit in migration control and the logic of the nation-state to identify, manage, and deport those without citizenship (Farmer, The British Journal of Social Work 51(8): 3301–3318, 2021; Humphries, British Journal of Social Work 34(1): 93–107, 2004; Jönsson, British Journal of Social Work 44(suppl 1): i35–i52, 2014). In this chapter, I consequently aim to shed light on what it can mean for social work to be a human rights profession vis-à-vis those whose ‘right to have rights’ is revoked (Arendt, The origins of totalitarianism (first edition), 1973; Kmak, The International Journal of Human Rights 24(8): 1201–1217, 2020). Based on extensive ethnographic research in the medical humanitarian praxis of Médecins Du Monde in Antwerp, it will be illustrated how social workers resist rather than comply with the necropolitical dehumanization of undocumented people. Concretely by expressing their ‘right to exist’, which will further be substantiated and conceptualized by ‘resisting illegality’, ‘reclaiming humanity’, and ‘reinforcing belonging’, the arguments echo and strengthen how commentators on social work have previously underscored the necessity of ‘bringing the human back to human rights’ (Ife, 2016, p. 6).
