Resources Database

An adequately planned, developed, and supported social service workforce (SSW) is critical to enable equitable access to social protection and basic social welfare for all, in both development and humanitarian contexts. Social work is the core profession within the social service workforce, but professional social workers usually work alongside para professionals and other members of the wider workforce providing care and support services. 

This ASEAN Guidance is intended to support policy makers, managers and members of the social service workforce in ASEAN Member States to strengthen the role of social workers and the wider social service workforce in and for social protection systems. The Guidance provides general information about the regional situation relating to the social service workforce in social protection and general recommendations on how to strengthen (plan, develop and support) this part of the overall social service workforce.

Social workers, and the wider social service workforce, do not only operate in the social welfare system. They can play a critical role across sectors, in order to reach the most vulnerable individuals and communities with support and services.

This Declaration, adopted by the Heads of AMS on 12 November 2020 at the 37th ASEAN Summit, provided the first regional framework for social work, calling for its professionalisation and expansion in the region. The focus areas identified by the Declaration build upon the evidence generated among AMS, including the 2019 Multi-Country Review of the Social Service Workforce in the East Asia and Pacific Region and priorities identified in the Kick-off Meeting for the Development of an ASEAN Declaration on Promotion of Social Work held on 28-29th October 2019.

The professionalisation of child and youth care (CYC) has long been an important milestone for the profession. This article will further add to the voices of child and youth care workers (CYCWs) about this process. It focuses on and explores the perspectives of CYCWs in eThekwini, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on the process of CYC professionalisation. The researchers conducted an in-depth qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 12 purposely selected CYCWs from different children’s homes in eThekwini.

This article reports on a qualitative research study which was intended to explore the perspectives of social work supervisees on the quality of supervision in the Giyani region of Limpopo, South Africa. It was important to determine the quality of supervision rendered because social work supervision is intended to capacitate social workers with knowledge and skills and to support them, yet such supervision is fraught with challenges for decades. Purposive sampling was thus used to select study participants from whom data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews.

This report provides an overview of the experiences and challenges of community care in Botswana. The findings indicate that older persons and family caregivers are struggling to sustain their livelihoods and meet the care needs of older persons due to the limited reach and value of social protection policies but also due to caregivers' competing work and time pressures.

Although it has made considerable progress over the last 30 years, Romania continues to face demographic and social challenges, reporting the highest at-risk-of-poverty and social exclusion rate in the Euopean Union, sharp disparities between rural and urban areas and a markedly ageing population. In this context, a strong social service workforce is required to address the needs of the most vulnerable populations. And yet, in a recent European Commission study on the social service workforce, the country ranks low on human resources available in the social sector.

This brief from the U.S. Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative outlines the Collaborative's efforts to support child welfare jurisdictions in integrating the voices of those directly affected by the child welfare system into practice and evaluation. The brief discusses the Collaborative's approach, which involves qualitative methods like literature reviews and facilitated discussions to understand challenges and successful strategies for incorporating LE into capacity-building efforts.

This article analyzes the role of social workers in developing children's independence in community care homes. The primary goal of a social worker's activity is to provide a suitable service and teach the recipients of their services to solve problems on their own. The children's opportunity to see and grow up in a close family environment depends on the employees' value orientation and worldview.

Child migration can be voluntary or forced, temporary or permanent, and it can occur with or without the accompaniment of a parent or adult caregiver. Children in the context of migration1 include those who are migrating within their own country, across borders, as well as children who remain behind while their caregivers migrate. Some children migrate due to armed conflict, violence, poverty and economic shocks, the effects of climate change, or to reunify with family. Others are drawn to move in pursuit of better opportunities.

The Orphans and Vulnerable Children's (OVC) crisis has raised the need for alternative solutions to OVC's problems. These new alternatives gave prominence to the growth of community-based organizations (CBOs) and their interventions. Community-based interventions are a crucial component of the response to make sure components of the response to ensure that the demands of OVCs are mitigated as they offer initial support and act as well-being nets.

At the end of 2019, an innovative approach was launched in social work with young people in out-of-home care in Riga, Latvia. This approach included prevention, changes in the form and methods of social work, and planning for the transition period. To implement the new approach, a new structure – the Youth Support Centre – was established. In 2022, a study with a mixed research methodology was conducted to evaluate the impact of the Youth Support Centre’s approach and activities on changes in the social functioning of young people.

The purpose of this Data Protection and Information Sharing Protocol (DPISP or Protocol) is to provide specific guidance to enable an agreement to be reached on data protection
and information sharing in the context of inter-agency child protection case management. 

Protection workers around the world are faced with methods and strategies to protect children at risk. Therefore, this article aims to identify the methods that are applied in the State of Kuwait by workers in the field of child protection in hospitals and community police, as well as the Kuwaiti Development Office. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted on 12 workers. The study utilized the qualitative approach, employing phenomenology as a research design.

Evidence suggests that providing out-of-home care to children is associated with high levels of compassion fatigue, possibly due to various work-related factors. This review examined the existing literature to determine the extent to which out of home care work results in compassion fatigue. To do so, it established which out of home care settings compassion fatigue has been measured in, how, and what factors contribute to developing compassion fatigue in this work.

Produced by UNICEF and IRC, with the support of the German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ) and the generous funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Caring for Child Survivors of Sexual Abuse (CCS) Resource Package (Second Edition, 2023) is a revision of the original CCS Guidelines and associated Training (First Edition, 2012).

Social service provision in Europe has increasingly incorporated informal carers. Consequently, these carers are now included within the scope of all social workers, including care managers. Most support for carers is indirect support, where opportunities for respite are channelled through the care receiver’s needs assessment. This approach highlights the unique role of care managers providing carer support as they balance their public task directed towards clients with the concurrent policy-driven expectation to support carers.

Although co-production between the government and society can improve service outcomes, the two parties may lack the willingness and the capacity to cooperate. Can nonprofit organizations play an active role in facilitating government–citizen co-production? If so, how? The role of nonprofits in social services co-production has received increasing attention, but studies on developing countries are limited. Therefore, this study conducts an in-depth case study of a rural social work institute in Z village, Beijing, China.