In the process of advancing social work services through project-based mechanisms, structural contradictions have gradually emerged during the incremental reform of professional development. These contradictions are primarily reflected in the positive internalities and negative externalities of project outcomes. Specifically, professional evaluations demonstrate the positive internalities of an organization’s project professionalism, while the projects simultaneously generate negative externalities that harm the service ecosystem. This structural contradiction stems from the inherent conflict between bureaucratic intervention and professional autonomy, and is expressed through the frictions between “indicator optimization” and “value deviation.” Addressing this dilemma necessitates a professional reconstruction of the service ecosystem. This includes establishing a client-centered evaluation system, aligning project planning with service principles, constructing dual institutional and financial support mechanisms, and fostering a collaborative multi-stakeholder service system.

Grounded in ecological systems theory, this systematic review examines multilevel risk factors for child maltreatment across Asia. An extensive comprehensive search of four English-language and two Chinese-language databases identified yields 85 studies meeting that meet the inclusion criteria. The findings indicate that risk factors exhibit both cross-cultural universality commonalities and distinctive features deeply rooted in Asian cultural contexts. At the individual level, both child characteristics of the child (including age, gender, special needs, behavioral and academic performance, and left-behind status)as well as and parental factors, (such as education, employment, mental health, and a history of childhood maltreatment history,) showed are significantly associations associated with maltreatment risk. The microsystem analysis highlightsed the salience of family structural vulnerabilities, financial hardship, and interpersonal tensions as key contributors. At the mesosystem level, insufficient social support networks are found to substantially elevated maltreatment risk. At the exosystem level, neighborhood characteristics and collective efficacy significantly influenced maltreatment occurrencethe occurrence of maltreatment. At the macrosystem level, traditional cultural values have profoundly shaped both the perpetration of and responses to maltreatment. The review further identifies emerging risk factors were also identified, including high-rise residential environments and public health crises. Recommendations include establishing the establishment of developmentally sensitive prevention frameworks, building the construction of targeted support networks for high-risk populations groups, promoting the promotion of culturally responsive parenting paradigm shifts, and developing the advancement of mechanisms to address emerging risks.

Mental health constitutes a major public health and social concern, significantly impacting economic and social development as well as individual well-being. The efficacy of addressing this challenge largely hinges on the extent to which the needs of service users are met. Guided by a service-user perspective, this study applies Photovoice: a participatory action research method to assess the rehabilitation needs of individuals with mental disorders in a community-based setting within the “Sunshine Heart Garden”project in Community S, Shanghai. Through the construction of a program logic model and the analysis of need-assessment results, the research systematically evaluated the applicability and effectiveness of the Photovoice approach. Findings reveal that Photovoice has significantly enhanced participants’ agency and capacity for self-expression, while effectively identifying their rehabilitation needs across several domains, including: disease self-management training, perceived need for rehabilitation services, reduction of social stigma, alleviation of family caregiving burdens, attainment of valued social roles, access to high-quality psychological services, and supported employment opportunities. Furthermore, the Photovoice approach has facilitated the development of a service-user-centered mechanism for community rehabilitation. This study contributes methodological innovation to advancing mental health service provision and refining community-based rehabilitation systems, while also expanding the theoretical frameworks and operational approaches for need assessment in the empirical research paradigm of social work.

Economic stress, as a typical type of negative life event, serves as a significant psychological stressor that can induce substantial psychological burden in college students and significantly increase their risk of experiencing psychological and physiological challenges, such as anxiety, depressive emotions, and sleep disorders. This study investigates the efficacy of solution-focused group work interventions in ameliorating anxiety, depressive emotions, and insomnia among economically disadvantaged college students. This intervention model focuses on tapping into group members’ internal strengths and resources, emphasizing future-oriented goal setting, and applying empowerment strategies. A total of 18 college students with economic difficulties and relevant psychological problems are recruited and randomly assigned to either an intervention group or a control group. The results show that the post-intervention scores on the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, Self-Rating Depression Scale, and Self-Rating Insomnia Scale have significantly reduced in the intervention group compared to pre-intervention scores (p<0.001). The findings indicate that solution-focused group work can effectively alleviate anxiety, depressive emotions, and insomnia among economically disadvantaged college students. It is suggested that higher education institutions should integrate such intervention models into the targeted student financial aid system and continuously take effective measures to provide comprehensive support for college students with economic difficulties, thereby facilitating the realization of their personal and social potential.

Existing literature, both domestic and international, has indicated that peer-led support for individuals with mental disorders achieves rehabilitation outcomes comparable to those attained through professional interventions. Furthermore, owing to peers’ inherent resonance and empathic understanding of illness, peer-led support can, in certain cases, surpass the effectiveness of professional services. Therefore, cultivating peer support workers (PSWs) whose competencies align with the needs of peer support services is of particular importance. This study situates its inquiry in rural communities and employs an action research design over a five-year period, during which the researchers have taken actions in three dimensions: personal qualities, social functioning, and work competence. The cultivation process evolved through three stages: beginning with social worker-led practice, progressing to PSW–professional collaboration, and culminating in PSW-led practice. The findings demonstrate a nascent cultivation model, in which the rural PSWs progress from passive service participation to the active assumption of responsibilities, and from role ambiguity to a deepened role identity.

This study examines the alignment between major and employment among social work graduates from 2017 to 2021. Utilizing secondary data analysis, job information from 1,626 individuals, including junior college, undergraduates, and master’s graduates, is analyzed. The junior college graduates are from two institutions, and the undergraduates and master’s graduates are from the three universities in Shanghai. The results show that the rate of major-to-employment match in social work remain below 30% under both broad and narrow operational definitions, substantially lower than the national average across all disciplines. The proportion of social work graduates is notably low, with undergraduate graduates exhibiting the lowest match rates. These findings reveal a pronounced outflow of professionally trained talent from social work education, particularly at the undergraduate level. The major-to-employment match rate for social work undergraduates remains consistently low during 2017-2021, whereas rates for junior college and masters’ graduates fluctuate at comparatively higher levels. This pattern may be attributable to two primary factors: the labor market’s differentiation in assigning roles based on educational attainment and the varying employment intentions of the graduates.

Drawing upon data from 487 respondents in the “2023 Survey on the Career Development Status of Young Public Welfare Talents in Guangdong Province”, this study adopts binary Logistic regression and multiple linear regression as primary analytical methods, supplemented by in-depth interviews, to examine the influence of organizational support and professional identity on turnover intention among young public welfare professionals. The findings indicate that approximately one-third of young public welfare talents exhibit turnover intention. Furthermore, the higher the levels of organizational support and professional identity are associated with reduced turnover intention. Notably, professional identity serves as a significant mediating variable in the relationship between organizational support and turnover intention. Therefore, the construction of a multi-tiered team of young public welfare professionals necessitates not only the development of a systematic, top-level design, but also the enhancement of organizations’ comprehensive and diversified support mechanisms for employees, including value guidance, capacity building, professional supervision, and career planning, to reinforce professional identity and mitigate turnover behavior among young public welfare talents.

With the increasing emphasis on practice orientation in professional master’s education, the writing of Master of Social Work (MSW) theses has developed a “practice preference” myth—the presumption that practice-oriented theses are more likely to gain favor from blind reviewers. Based on a content analysis of blind review comments on 398 MSW theses at G University from 2021 to 2025, this study systematically examines the effects of thesis type and various quality evaluation factors on blind review scores and explores whether the assumption of practice preference is consistent with empirical evidence from the blind review process. The findings show that although the proportion of practice-oriented theses has increased year by year, their blind review scores are not significantly higher than those of non-practice-oriented theses, and the hypothesis of practice preference is not supported. Fixed-effects model analysis indicates that the key determinants of blind review scores lie in the academic quality of the thesis itself, with the forward-looking nature of the research topic, the richness of cited materials, and the innovativeness of arguments exerting particularly significant influence. MSW thesis writing should move beyond the uncritical preference for practice-intervention formats, while placing greater emphasis on innovation and practical relevance, strengthening theoretical foundations, enhancing research capacity, and adhering to rigorous academic writing standards.

The “Make or Buy” dilemma represents a classic topic in the discourse on public service provision. Fiscal decentralization is posited to serve as an incentive for local governments to better align with the preferences of local residents, foster innovation, and facilitate the engagement of social organizations in the delivery of public services. Utilizing provincial panel data spanning 2007 to 2020, the findings reveal that higher levels of fiscal decentralization are associated with increased provision of basic public services. However, a higher degree of social organization development does not positively mediate the relationship between the levels of fiscal decentralization and public service provision. Further analyses indicate that government size weakens the positive relationship between the number of social organizations and public service provision. Moreover, government size generates a substitution effect in social organizations’ donations in public service provision, such that the government absorbs social organizations and internalizes public service “production” through implicit expansion. It remains uncertain whether such dynamics ultimately benefit the development of social organizations. However, enhancing the public orientation and professional capacity of social organizations persists as a critical factor for improving public services provision.

Hub-type social organizations function as institutional interfaces mediating the relationship between the government and society. Positioned within a “structural hole” in the government–society network, they develop asymmetric resource dependencies resulting from unidirectional administrative resource flows. To sustain collaborative relationships with the government while expanding organizational autonomy, these organizations construct a three-dimensional adaptive mechanism, “government–society embeddedness,” “inter-organizational mutual assistance”, and “enterprise–society integration”, to facilitate resource integration and relational reproduction. This mechanism includes: reconstructing resource dependence through Party-building integration and semi-embedded cooperation, thereby alleviating the tension between institutional dependency and organizational autonomy; accumulating trust capital by delivering services that embody both administrative and public-welfare attributes, achieving a dialectical unity of administrative logic and social value; and establishing a closed-loop exchange system of “needs–capital–expertise” to drive the transformation of commercial resources into public goods. Through this operational framework, hub-type social organizations effectively convert their structural hole advantage into a capacity for sustainable resource integration. This not only enables organizational self-reinforcement but also provides a durable pivot for pluralistic collaborative governance.

Harmonious neighborhood relations constitute a crucial determinant in the advancement of rural revitalization strategies. This study employs the case of a social work project in J village to construct a three-dimensional embedding model: encompassing the “relationship-organization-structure”, reveals the operational logic of professional social work within rural governance. First, through the integration of both professional and quotidian relationships, the study reconstructs a collaborative governance mechanism that involves four principle actors:government, village committee, social workers, and villagers. Second, it fosters the development of pivotal community social organizations, establishing a dual empowerment framework characterized by professional transformation and localized reconstruction. Third, it revitalizes public space mechanisms to foster a community of village governance and promote the reconfiguration of community public structures. The “three-dimensional embedding” model systematically elucidates the dynamic evolutionary process of social work integration in rural neighborhood contexts, ultimately achieving the “integrated” alignment of multiple stakeholders within the rural governance structure.