The advent of the digital-intelligent era has introduced new opportunities for technological artefacts to reshape the boundaries and practical modes of social work services. The application of technological artefacts is promoting a “nonhuman turn” in social work intervention wherein nonhuman entities function as active agents in practical networks. As supporters of social workers, technological artefacts engage in translation processes such as problematization, interessement, enrollment, and mobilization within relational networks composing both human and nonhuman entities. Through these processes, technological artefacts collaborate with human actors to form joint agency and advance the effectiveness of social work interventions. Social workers collaborating with technological artefacts should adhere to contextualized principles, including assessing the situational appropriateness of technologies, engaging in ongoing critical reflections on their agential effects, and actively participating in “value negotiation” with technological artefacts. Social workers are key actors, translators, and constructors within the “human-nonhuman assemblage” intervention network, driving the ecology of social work practice towards fairness, justice, and enhanced well-being. The “nonhuman turn” enriches our understanding of the complexities of social work practice in an era characterized by deeply intertwined human-nonhuman relationships.

As artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things are becoming increasingly embedded in social governance and public services, the traditional “human-centered” professional relationship in social work is facing systematic theoretical and practical challenges. The nonhuman turn that emerged in the late twentieth century provides important theoretical resources for social work to break through the constraints of anthropocentrism. Based on a review of the theoretical frameworks of posthumanism, actor-network theory, and new materialism, this article reconstructs and reflects upon the professional relationships in social work. Specifically, at the ontological level, professional relationships shift from a subject-centered interactional model to relational networks co-produced by multiple actors. At the epistemological level, knowledge production extends beyond its reliance on human experience and takes on a distributed character shaped jointly by data, algorithms, and material environments. And at the methodological level, practice shifts from linear intervention to relational engagement. However, this theoretical shift also brings practical challenges, including increased complexity and uncertainty, as well as the reconfiguration of professional identity and the blurring boundaries of ethical responsibility. It is therefore necessary to construct a “human–nonhuman coexistent” paradigm of professional relationships in order to respond to the professional crises, value reconstruction, and paradigm transformation of social work in the digital and intelligent era.

Children constitute a vital force in community governance, and the exercise of their agency directly impacts the effectiveness of child-friendly community development. Employing participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study investigates the bidirectional empowerment process and its underlying mechanisms of child participation in community governance within Zhengzhou’s Q Community. Findings reveal that to implement child-friendly community development, Q Community promotes the legitimate construction of child empowerment through policy action, activates agentic practices in community spaces through co-creation, enhances the regenerative efficacy of resource interactions via professional service provision, and reshapes intergenerational capital transformation under cultural synergy. These efforts collectively constitute a “child participation?community response?children re-empowerment” bidirectional mechanism, shaping what is termed “feedback-driven governance” in child-friendly community building. The realization of this governance relies on policy empowerment grounded in institutional foundations, the reproductive effects of resource integration, and bidirectional adaptation within a feedback loop. This approach not only facilitates the transformation of actions in child-friendly community development but also validates the feasibility of activating grassroots governance innovation by positioning children as the primary actors in community governance. Ultimately, it provides crucial insights for developing inclusive communities that facilitate child participation.

In the context of fertility-support policies and the “Double Reduction” initiative, community-based collaborative parenting has emerged as a vital approach to addressing the challenges posed by intensive parenting and the privatization of childrearing. Anchored in the theoretical framework of social work, this study examines the relatively underexplored practice of community co-parenting in county-level contexts. Using the C Community in X County, Shandong Province, as a case study, this study adopts an ecological systems perspective and employs a mixed-methods design to construct a comprehensive, grounded account of local co-parenting practices. The findings indicate that the co-parenting initiatives in C Community encompass three interrelated dimensions—basic childcare, developmental child activities, and supportive family education—forming a relatively well-integrated co-parenting ecosystem. Nevertheless, persistent challenges remain, including limited public awareness and low service uptake. These difficulties are rooted in the utilitarian conception of time within intensive parenting culture, the information cocoon effect, and the limited visibility of community program outcomes. Building on these insights, the study reflects on the structural and cultural distinctions between county-level and metropolitan co-parenting practices and, leveraging the advantages of localized social networks, proposes practical strategies to dismantle parenting information cocoons, enhance the visibility and perceived effectiveness of community co-parenting, and align service provision more closely with families’ educational expectations.

With the rise of the digital economy, novel employment forms that rely on Internet platforms have thrived, engendering a decentralized “platform-indiivdual” employment model. This new employment model has resulted in the atomization among workers employed in the new business forms giving rise to significant organizational challenges. Based on a three-dimensional analysis framework encompassing the structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions of social capital, this research delves into the processes and mechanisms underpinning the reorganization of workers in new business forms through social work interventions. Research has revealed that structural capital establishes organizational carriers for the reorganization of workers in new business forms, while cognitive capital imparts meaning. Relational capital ameliorates trust deficits inherent in atomized workers. The complementary dual-track functions of social work, namely, institutional substitution and catalytic medium, serve as crucial mechanisms for the construction of social capital among workers in new business forms.

Urban empty-nest older adults constitute a high-priority demographic in the development of an age-friendly society, as their quality of life directly affects social harmony and public well-being. Existing studies have indicated that, although these individuals have benefited from the convenience brought by smart home devices, they face persistent practical challenges resulting from the digital divide and cognitive decline. Accordingly, this study has developed and implemented an integrated intervention program centered on smart home-based training, supplemented by social work support and group work. A quasi-experimental design is adopted to evaluate the specific effectiveness of this program in enhancing the cognitive abilities of urban empty-nest seniors. The results show that older adults in the intervention group have exhibited statistically significant improvements in cognitive function; follow-up assessments during the maintenance phase further demonstrate that group work can help consolidate intervention outcomes and exert sustained synergistic effects. These findings confirm that the service model integrating technological empowerment and humanistic care is feasible for improving the cognitive status of empty-nest seniors, thereby providing an evidence-based practical foundation for establishing a community-level cognitive health support system.

Urban communities often encounter challenges in environmental governance, such as insufficient resident participation and a lack of public space management. The promotion of community-based environmental governance collectives emerges as an important strategy for addressing deficiencies in multi-stakeholder collaboration and the persistence of effective governance mechanisms. Utilizing Y Community in Guangzhou as a case study, this study conducted participatory action research to investigate a multi-stakeholder community garden co-construction initiative. Adopting the analytical framework of “space–participation–empowerment”, this study examines the practical process through which environmental social work intervenes in the construction of community-based environmental governance collectives. The findings show that the logic of environmental social work practice has shifted from a “linear” task progression to a “closed-loop” mechanism. Internal coordination and external linkage are identified as primary relationship strategies that facilitate relationship adjustment and resource transformation among multiple stakeholders. On this basis, an evaluation model for assessing the effectiveness of community-based environmental governance collectives is constructed, encompassing three dimensions: spatial production, stakeholder participation, and social work services.

Evidence-based social work guidelines are centered on service recipients and grounded in the best available evidence and expert consensus. Through a scientific, systematic, transparent, and rigorous development process, these guidelines provide action-oriented and contextually appropriate intervention strategies for individuals in need, while adhering to core social work values and professional ethical norms. A defining feature of such guidelines is the organic unity of scientific rigor, practical utility, and humanistic concern. They emphasize the systematic synthesis and translational application of high-quality research evidence, seek to translate professional knowledge into accessible and actionable guidance for practitioners, and attend to the values, cultural contexts, and unique needs of service users. To advance the construction of evidence-based social work guidelines, future efforts should focus on three key pathways: learning from the core logics of evidence-based practice, adapting guidelines to local practice contexts, and innovating around indigenous issues. This approach will contribute to the development of a scientific, applicable, and sustainable system of evidence-based social work guidelines with Chinese characteristics, thereby providing sustained impetus for the professionalization and scientization of social work in China.

In the process of advancing the refinement of grassroots governance, grid governance faces challenges such as institutional fragmentation and disconnected service delivery. The involvement of social work has become an important strategy for overcoming these problems. Taking the “Quanke Yange” municipal-level pilot project in Street S of City C as a case study, this paper adopts action research to examine the practice of social work orientation in grid governance. The study observes a “three-stage progressive” pattern in project implementation within which the “pre-cognition” lays the foundation for involvement, the construction of dual identities confers discursive authority upon social workers, and professional empowerment promotes the professionalization of governance. The core practical logic includes situational logic, interconstructive logic, and pragmatist logic. The practical effects of the project fully conform to the 4 core standards of social work orientation in grid governance, indicating that social work can be effectively integrated into grid governance to achieve the integrated innovation of “professionalism + administration”.

The development of sustainable operational capacity of county-level charitable organizations at the intersection of state governance structures and local social networks offers an important lens for understanding state–society relations in grassroots governance. Existing studies frequently adopt frameworks of philanthropic property rights, principal–agent relations, or interest-based bargaining among actors. These approaches tend to reduce local charity associations either to technical vehicles for managing charitable assets or to isolated arenas of internal organizational governance, thus failing to explain the formation of organizational authority and the sustained production of public legitimacy. This article reflects on the limitations of the above explanations and proposes an analytical framework of “governance authority of social organizations.” Governance authority refers to an institutionalized configuration of rights, responsibilities, and capacities grounded in social recognition. Through the organizational platform of the charity association, governance authority enables community members to acquire structured positions within local governance arrangements, thereby allowing the organization to mobilize resources, coordinate social relations, and produce public legitimacy. Governance authority is characterized by three attributes: social recognition, embeddedness, and functionality. Based on a case study of the charity association in County J of Province F, this study finds that the association relies on the local socio-cultural ecology and a socialized philanthropic network to establish the social foundations for grassroots collaborative governance. Through institutional embedding, structural incorporation, and procedural deliberation, it continuously generates and reconfigures a more inclusive and dynamic mechanism of cooperation, thereby aligning local governance objectives with organizational action. In effect, the activation and operation of governance authority reshape local rights-responsibilities arrangements and facilitate the evolution of grassroots governance configurations. By revealing the mechanisms through which governance authority is constructed, operates, and develops, this study advances understanding of how grassroots governance order is formed in a period of social transformation.