This study explores how healthcare social workers make sense of empowerment-based practice and how they enact it in everyday interventions. Specifically, it examines how social workers interpret power, powerlessness, and empowerment; how they perceive their own professional power and vulnerability; and how they translate the empowerment approach into practice within complex institutional and relational contexts. The study adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach and draws on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-two social workers (fourteen women and eight men) across five clinical fields in nine cities in Türkiye. Data were analysed through iterative coding and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three themes were identified: (i) meanings of power, powerlessness, and empowerment; (ii) professional power and powerlessness; and (iii) empowering professional practices. Empowerment was conceptualized as a dynamic, relational, and contextually situated process, negotiated through trust-building, awareness-raising, ethical positioning, and resource mediation, while simultaneously constrained by institutional conditions and interprofessional hierarchies. The study highlights the need to strengthen anti-oppressive approaches, enhance professional recognition, and develop organizational conditions that support empowerment-oriented practice within complex healthcare systems.
Abstract Sure Start is an area-based intervention which offers support for families with children under four living in some of the most deprived areas in Northern Ireland. This study uses administrative data on almost every child born in Northern Ireland between 2006 and 2013 (n = 108,000). We use a quasi-experiment (Regression Discontinuity design) to measure the impact of Sure Start on interactions with social services in the first five years of life. Our results suggest that Sure Start substantially reduces rates of children who are referred to social services and become a ‘child in need’. We find that these effects are stronger for mothers who were 21 or younger at childbirth and in the first three years of life. However, we find no effects for child protection or a child going into out-of-home care. These findings suggest that area-based early years interventions can be effective at reducing statutory interventions with benefits for families and social services. Further research is recommended to take advantage of the administrative data and design-based evaluation methods to explore the impact of Sure Start in later life.
Abstract Black mental health in the USA is shaped by anti-Black racism, economic inequality, gendered racialization, and unequal access to responsive care. This commentary advances critical cosmopolitanism as an ethical orientation for social work, one grounded in two commitments: every person merits equal moral concern, and meaningful respect requires attention to history, power relations, and social location. We argue that intersectionality is essential to translating these commitments into practice. Cosmopolitanism widens the boundaries of obligation, whereas intersectionality reveals how seemingly universal institutions distribute recognition, protection, and resources unevenly within Black communities. Together, these perspectives resist both moral exclusion and a monolithic account of Black life. We distinguish critical cosmopolitanism from global sameness, color-blindness, cultural competence, and individual identity formation, and we connect it to social work’s commitments to human rights, collective responsibility, and anti-oppressive practice. We then develop implications for mental health assessment, therapeutic relationships, community partnerships, social service organizations, education, policy, and research. Our central claim is that cosmopolitanism should universalize moral responsibility, not Black experience. Shared human worth must be joined with cultural humility, structural analysis, material redistribution, and accountability to the Black communities served by, or excluded from, mental health and social service systems.
Abstract Climate change, whose impacts are increasingly evident worldwide, is a global problem that affects both the natural environment and human societies. Although environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) are expected to address these challenges, the environmental–human intersection within their activities remains underexplored. The aim of this research, designed as a qualitative multiple case study, is to examine the human–natural environment interaction in the activities of seventeen ENGOs in Türkiye and to make recommendations based on ecosocial work practice to overcome the obstacles they face. A reflective thematic analysis showed that a group of ENGOs from Türkiye encounter institutional and structural barriers that prevent them from prioritizing the natural environment–human relationship in the implementation of their activities. This research highlights how social workers can strengthen ENGOs’ services in ontological, epistemological, and methodological contexts to overcome these barriers. This study emphasizes the importance of collaboration between ecosocial workers need to collaborate with ENGOs in addressing global environmental problems that generate social inequalities.
Abstract Psychological assessment chatbots are increasingly used in mental health services, yet comparative research on their feasibility and user acceptability remains insufficient. This study compared user experience of scale-based and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)-based assessment chatbots to identify their respective strengths, drawbacks, and interaction characteristics. A total of 140 participants aged 18–57 with diverse demographics were recruited via WeChat and equally split into two groups for chatbot trials, followed by semi-structured interviews analysed through hybrid deductive-inductive coding with NVivo 14. Scale-based chatbots relieved self-disclosure pressure and encouraged honest reporting but suffered functional and diagnostic limitations. DSM-5-based chatbots delivered stronger anthropomorphic emotional engagement yet lacked clinical diagnostic rigor. Institutional endorsement, intrinsic motivation, and perceived reliability jointly predicted acceptance. Chatbot-aided assessment improves accessibility of mental health support. Their clinical and social work application relies on balancing empathetic emotional interaction with standardized, valid diagnostic performance.
