The aim of this paper is to explore the experiences of a queer and Filipino social worker-researcher navigating dual identities, particularly as a clinician and researcher, within Western academic spaces. Drawing on the concept of insider/outsider, I critically reflect on how, in research and clinical spaces historically dominated by White, heterosexual men, my educational and professional credentials grant me legitimacy and partial insider status, while my queer and Filipino identities simultaneously position me at the margins. The paper also reflects on experiences navigating the blurring of boundaries, or role confusions, as a social worker-researcher. The paper then discusses approaches and considerations social worker-researchers, both emerging and established, can employ to navigate these tensions, such as reflexivity, ethnographic refusal, and a Filipino concept called, “kapwa.” The implication of this paper is to expand the scholarship on the reflexivity of social workerresearchers, particularly within the queer Filipino/a/x/diaspora.

Cross-sector collaboration between statutory child protection and domestic and family violence services (DFV) is recognised as a best social work practice to improve the safety of women and children. However, there are many challenges in establishing collaborative service-delivery, particularly between statutory child protection and non-statutory specialist DFV agencies and there has been extremely limited research in this context. Addressing this research gap, this study used a qualitative research design to demonstrate the benefits of using co-design to build collaborative practice at the intersection of DFV and child protection in South Australia. Co-design processes were convened over two sets of three workshops which were recorded and transcribed for thematic analysis, examining both their content and process over time. The co-design process created a safe relational space facilitating building of relationships and the development of two prototypes. The two prototypes articulated the essential elements of collaborative service delivery including the essential nature of partnership, creating a shared language, and addressing power dynamics. Co-design engaged practitioners including social workers to develop collaboration that was culturally safe, informed by practice wisdom and expert knowledge that responsive and effective in a context of complexity.

In this essay we review the development of critical and radical social work in order to reflect on Denzin’s contributions in contrast to the Latin American movement to reconceptualize the discipline using the Chilean case as an example. The dialogues between Denzin, Freire and Boal are focused from the perspective of the enrichment of social work in their search to contribute to overcoming conditions of social injustice. It is established that Denzin’s ideas about social work in the seventh moment can be thought as a research program for the coming years. Firstly, we will trace Denzin’s presence in the critical trajectories of Social Work to locate his dialogue with Brazilian authors such as Paulo Freire (1921–1997) and Augusto Boal (1931–2009). Next, we will describe the emergence of the process of reconceptualization of social work formulated from our Latin American lands in the turbulent decades of the 60’s and 70’s. Thirdly, we will evaluate Denzin’s ethical proposals for social work from a perspective anchored to our Latin American reality by discussing and evaluating the eight interpretative criteria that Denzin (2002) proposed to strengthen critical qualitative social work.

In this collective autoethnography two academics who live in Israel explore the possibility of friendship across different social positions, religions and nationalities. The article describes how autoethnography and Denzin’s scholarship have made this friendship possible and deepened it. To this end, the article explores their journey within neoliberal Israeli, dominantly Jewish, academia, investigate the (im)possibility of authentic dialogue between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian Israeli woman in Israel in this moment of violence in Israel, and examine how Denzin’s scholarship and conferences have allowed them to explore these questions using autoethnography. Inspired by Denzin’s scholarship we use collective autoethnography as a methodology that is grounded in love, care, hope and forgiveness to dwell together in a fractured discussion about shattered time and space. Our time is fractured by past and present traumas and the fear of what the future holds. Our space has been damaged by violent conflict. The article concludes by discussing the importance of Denzin’s scholarship for critical social work researchers during violent conflicts.

Social workers are frequently exposed to the suffering of clients and communities they partner with while navigating multiple institutional factors exacerbating their and their clients’ trauma. While significant research has identified high levels of trauma exposure response and burnout among master’s level social workers, limited work explicitly examines what influences the impact of trauma exposure response among MSW interns. As such, a Grounded Theory design was used to understand the process through which MSW interns and supervisors identify and respond to the manifestation of interns’ trauma exposure in placement. Data were collected via in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 MSW interns and 11 supervisors from three MSW programs. Findings inform the Interactional Process of the Three S’s, which highlights the process through which the Self, Supervisor, and System either exacerbate or mitigate interns’ trauma exposure response. Although interns leveraged coping skills, most interns described a “hopelessness” as they internalized the inability to change the circumstances that continued to traumatize their clients. A few interns could make meaning out of their roles, primarily influenced by the support from their supervisors. Interviews with supervisors outline how personal experiences and coping methods, their own experience with their supervisors, and the university collectively impact how they support interns exposed to client trauma. The Interactional Process underscores the need to address harmful policies and practices throughout social work systems. Implications describe points of intervention for universities and placement sites to implement to protect MSW interns and their supervisors.

In this paper, two researchers with backgrounds in ethnography describe and reflect on their experiences from a qualitative, transnational study called 'Back to the Future: Archiving in Residential Children's Homes (ARCH) in Scotland and Germany. Important goals of the study are the investigation and development of digital community archives for young people, care workers and care leavers from residential homes in order to support their memories of shared everyday life. Methodologically, the study is based on ideas of participatory research in combination with ethnographic elements, although there were some changes in the implementation compared to the original plan. These changes were made on the basis of conditions found in the field and represented attempts to achieve the goals of the study despite some unexpected situations and developments. This resulted in moments of tension, which we reflect on self-critically in this article. Using the example of our research, we highlight some of the opportunities and challenges of qualitative study designs that seek to understand and change realities in the context of social work.

Social work grounds itself in a person-in-environment (PIE) paradigm, often centering Ecological Systems Theory in early coursework. However, there are limited methods in social work research for operationalizing PIE. This paper introduces geographic interviews as a method for understanding the relationship between people and their environments. Geographic interviews, a participant-driven qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) method, combine go-along/walking interviews with participant markings on visual-spatial representations (e.g., architectural floorplans, neighborhood maps) to represent individual and collective experiences of a specific space. This paper illustrates a case example of using geographic interviews to understand the recently housed young adults’ experiences of a permanent supportive housing (PSH) setting from data collection through dissemination. As a method-in-development, this paper ends with key questions which may future advancement of the geographic interview methodology. Specifically, future work should explore the use of physical movement, map types, and technology/materials as variables in implementing the geographic interview methodology to understand the relationship between people and their environments.

Social work as a profession is at a crossroads. The Master of Social Work Based in Indigenous Knowledges Program is pushing back against the colonial agenda and returning to and centering Indigenous Knowledges in social work practice. As a graduate of the program, I share my experience as I traveled through the program and shifted my practice as a social worker. I offer my story and reflections of how I shifted my practice and embodied resurgence to challenge how we think about social work education.

This submission for the special issue of qualitative social work journal describes how the authors have implemented a Indigenous therapy model in Indigenous communities. The approach centers Indigenous worldviews with a focus on ceremony, trauma, and spirituality.