Guided by an ancient Chinese philosophy, Taoism, we investigate whether Taoist thinking style, including naturalness, non-striving, and acceptance, has the potential to lower vicarious trauma among social workers and the mediating role of individual adaptabilities. In a survey of 547 Chinese social workers, regression and path modeling showed that Taoist thinking was associated with less vicarious trauma, and that this association was largely accounted for by crisis-, work-stress-, and interpersonal-oriented adaptabilities. Accordingly, supervision and capacity-building may integrate Taoist-informed perspectives, cultivating acceptance, flexible crisis response, stress management, and collaborative practice, to bolster social workers’ well-being.

While research has explored challenges faced by transnational social workers, the role of language testing and policy requirements remains underexamined. This article draws on a doctoral longitudinal study exploring professional identity development among international social work students and graduates in Australia, with a focus on English language policies. Findings highlight three key themes: (1) a sense of othering and powerlessness, (2) language testing as a barrier and stressor and (3) increased vulnerability and financial burden. By addressing this gap, the study makes a unique contribution to the limited research on how English language testing and policies shape professional identity in a globally mobile profession.

This article examines social workers’ role in promoting mental health services for refugees in Indonesia. It shows how the social workers’ function aligns with universal professional ethical frameworks. Social workers implement therapeutic support, and life review therapy (LRT) to support refugees’ mental health recovery in countries without international refugee protocols. This study contributes to an approach that social work practitioners can adapt in countries that are not signatories to the International Refugee Convention. Furthermore, it emphasizes the critical need to develop mental health protocol policies designed explicitly for refugee populations in transitional settings.

This article explores how Arab social work students in Israel conceptualize solidarity, navigating between ethnic identity, community loyalty, and universal professional ethics. Using a phenomenological qualitative approach, 25 in-depth interviews were thematically analyzed. Findings revealed that students view solidarity as a multidimensional phenomenon, including moral value, emotional empathy, daily mutual aid, and professional identity. A distinction emerged between takaful (communal-religious mutual support) and tadamun (moral trans-border solidarity). The study highlights the tension and interplay between identity-based and universal solidarity, offering an indigenous perspective that bridges local cultural values with global ethics in social work practice.

This article explores religion and spirituality as sources of resilience among social workers in South Africa. Social work remains a demanding, emotionally straining, and stressful profession. Although social workers are exposed to adversity, they are expected to be resilient. While some experience structural difficulties and remain passive and vulnerable, others are resilient. The study adopted a qualitative research approach. It presents coping mechanisms for social workers to be resilient and deal with adversity. The study reveals the cultural, traditional, and spiritual as sources of resilience and provides recommendations to bridge the resilience gap guided by a strength-based approach.

The high turnover rate of social workers is an extremely serious problem. This meta-analysis comprehensively examines the predictors of turnover intention among social workers, synthesising findings from 29 studies involving 34,071 participants. The results of the study show that social workers’ turnover intention is more related to job content and work environment factors. We also propose a framework for predicting the strength of the relationship between predictors and turnover intention, aiming to help social work researchers and practitioners better understand turnover intention and retain social workers.

Supervision is crucial in social work for enhancing service delivery standards. In South Africa, deficiencies in supervision practices and ineffective implementation of the social development approach have negatively impacted service quality. This study investigated the relationship between supervision and the adoption of the social development approach within the Department of Social Development in Mpumalanga’s Gert Sibande District. Using a qualitative case study design and semi-structured interviews, the findings revealed that supervision in the district does not effectively support the social development approach, raising concerns about service delivery quality.

Extremism is a global threat, and preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) is a worldwide challenge. As a soft-power approach, social work can play a crucial role in P/CVE. This study explores professional concepts and their impact on P/CVE regarding Islamism through eight semi-structured interviews with practitioners in Germany, analyzed using a reconstructive-documentary approach. Findings suggest that social work can contribute significantly to P/CVE if it avoids acting as a repressive agent and focuses on advocacy. Integrating social justice approaches into P/CVE is essential for reducing stigmatization and fostering emancipation. The study demonstrates how professional practice can influence problem perceptions and policies.

This article examines the meaning-making experiences of migrant social workers from Hong Kong in England. Individual interviews were conducted with 22 migrant social workers. Family comes first, regaining confidence from self-doubt and persevering and keep fighting are the meanings they attributed to their resettlement experiences. García-Ramírez et al.’s acculturative integration framework offers insights into how migrant social workers can regain their sense of agency, activate and expand their support networks and mobilise collective resources to overcome systemic barriers. This approach enables them to adapt to their new lives and potentially restart their profession in a new country.