In light of the ongoing relaxation of fertility policies, the fertility rate has not increased as anticipated and has even experienced a decline. Based on Coser’s social conflict theory, factor analysis is adopted to investigate the factors that influence the fertility intentions of youth of childbearing age. The findings reveal that the factors affecting the fertility intentions of youth of childbearing age are, in order of significance, institutional factors, conflict of interest between individuals and work-family resources, and conflict of fertility values. Notably, the inadequate livelihood security system, gender-based inequality within the employment system, and the insufficient housing security are the main institutional factors influencing the fertility intentions of youth of childbearing age. Conflict sof interests arise between individuals and their families, as well as between the families and their employing organizations. The conflict of perceptions manifest in the clash between the traditional and modern sconcept of reproduction, as well as in tensioins between the utilitarian and the emotional considerations regarding childbearing and childrearing. To improve the childbearing environment and increase the young people’s fertility intentions, the study advocates for the enhancement of the supportive childbearing and childrearing policies, the development of mechanisms to promotework-family balance.

Using structured interviews, this study learns the underlying causes of emotional neglect among families of ten rural left-behind children in W village of Linzhou city, Henan Province. The results reveal that left-behind children’s family emotional deficits are manifested in four aspects: repressed emotions, behavioral problems, incorrect perceptions and poor social skills. Based on the social ecosystem theory and utilizing the Satir model of family therapy and interaction, the research team has carried out three phases of group work in seven sessions to remodel the family emotions of left-behind children. Results suggest that group work has a significant catalytic effect on improving left-behind children’s family emotions. Interventions on both the left-behind children and their environmental systems can help to alleviate the negative impact of parental absence. In addition, fostering effective family communication can promote healthier parent-child relationship.

Empowerment is a crucial concept in the field of elderly professional services. However, social work services for elderly individuals living alone often struggle to achieve effectiveness due to the lack of an active aging perspective. This study integrates the theoretical connotations of empowerment and active aging to construct a “Agency-Health-Participation-Security” (AHPS) four-dimensional empowerment intervention framework. Using 17 typical cases of social work interventions for elderly individuals living alone published on the official website of the China National Social Work Association as examples, the study employs a minimal possible key case research logic to conduct a content analysis of the textual data. Research findings indicate that the subjectivity empowerment strategy emphasizes self-reflective abilities while relatively neglecting rational decision-making and capabilities for independent action. The health empowerment strategy generally focuses on mental health but pays insufficient attention to physical health status. Additionally, there is an overall lack of emphasis by social workers on participatory empowerment. In terms of security empowerment, there is a predominance of linking institutional resources, while the development of community security systems are comparatively weak. The AHPS is an empowerment intervention framework that incorporates an active aging perspective, offering a viable practical guide for social work services targeting elderly individuals living alone.

In the context of the digital era, developing an expert consensus on “digital social work” will help to deepen and promote the understanding of digital transformation among social work educators, researchers, and practitioners. Through expert discussions, proposal writing, multiple rounds of feedback, and co-signing, this article reached a consensus on three key aspects: the definition, significance and challenges, and development recommendations for digital social work. The definition highlights the use of information and communication technology in social work, while also emphasizing the significant impacts and challenges which digital social work poses for service recipients, social workers, direct services, service organizations, education and training, and the profession itself. Lastly, the article provides recommendations for the future development of digital social work, including the co-construction of infrastructure, the development of service models, strengthening discipline-building, revising ethical standards, and creating theoretical frameworks.

Clarifying the research status, summarizing research hotspots, and identifying trends in social work practice research in China can provide valuable theoretical insights for the research and development of social work practice in China’s New Era. Using the literature visualization tool CiteSpace, this research examines 1,182 core literature in social work practice research from CSSCI journals between 1998 to 2023. The analysis encompasses the overview of the publications and the collaborative landscape among core authors and research institutions in this field. Keyword co-occurrence maps, cluster maps, and mutation word information maps are drawn to examine the hot topics and main themes in the field, as well as to predict future research trends. The findings indicate that social work practice research in China characterized by “high concentration and low dispersion”, highlighting the significant role played by core authors and research groups in this field; The primary focus of the field center around five modules: practical social work, professional construction, social governance, values and ethics, and theoretical foundations. It is predicted that future research will continue to contribute to rural revitalization strategies, ecological environment care, community governance community construction, government procurement of services, and grassroots governance. However, improvements are needed in several areas: the level of collaboration and diversity among authors and institutions need to be enhanced; further research on the integration of innovative technologies in social work practices is necessary; policy research related to practice needs to be further developed.

With the rapid development of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, urban communities in China are facing the dual dilemma of lagging governance model and low governance efficiency. The community ’s “intelligent governance” model has become an effective way to solve these dilemmas by integrating advanced digital technology and intelligent management methods to achieve efficient and accurate governance of community affairs. Through government guidance, market assistance and social participation, the community of Jiunanhai County in Guangzhou has built a system of intelligent security, intelligent fire protection and intelligent medical care, and realized the intelligent transformation of old communities. Based on the concept, mechanism and mode of “intelligent governance” in the community of Jiunanhai County, this paper constructs a theoretical model of multi-governance, and puts forward that strengthening scientific and technological support, promoting multi-governance and ensuring residents’ dominance are the practical paths to realize “intelligent governance” in the community.

Drawing on 1,813 papers on volunteer motivation published in CNKI between 2003 to 2023, this study employs CiteSpace to conduct bibliometric and visualization analyses. By using bibliometric methods and visualization techniques, it draws knowledge maps such as high-frequency keyword clusters to analyze the current situation, hotspots, and development trends of volunteer incentive research in China. The findings reveal a rapid increase in publications over the past two decades, with research predominantly focusing on youth volunteers. Core themes include the sustainable development of volunteer behavior, incentive mechanisms, and policy support. It shows characteristics such as diversified research objects, localized research themes, and research content closely linked to contemporary hotspots. Future studies in this field focus on exploring differentiated incentive measures for volunteers, improving the support system for volunteer services, and building a collaborative incentive system.

As people turn to nostalgia more frequently to ease anxiety and combat uncertainty, social work services are increasingly focusing on the use of nostalgia therapy. Based on the historical origin and application of nostalgia therapy, social work and nostalgia therapy are expected to further achieve integrated development. Social work not only needs to flexibly use the four service modes of narrative nostalgia, instrumental nostalgia, transitive nostalgia and integrative nostalgia, but also needs to follow the practical framework and action steps of style matching, contextual linking, memory redemption, narrative deconstruction, identity reconstruction and support allegory, and grasp the core technologies of aesthetic matching, nostalgia anchoring, space-time metaphor and life story.

With the need for localization and specialization, embeddedness and autonomy have become the two fundamental strategies for the development of social work in China. Autonomy is proposed to reconcile the tension between structure and action under the embeddedness strategy, and it further give rise to practice research in social work. Drawing upon the postmodern theories of social work practice research and the four main explanatory frameworks in China, the paper finds identifies two primary similarities among the explanatory frameworks: First, they all emphasize the positive significance of practical experience in knowledge production; Second, they all recognize the research status of practitioners in the academic division of labor. However, the research on social work practice has not yet formed a basic research consensus, and the research still stays at the epistemological interpretation level, leading to the core issues and research boundaries of social work practice research,research are ambiguous. Therefore, the future direction of social work practice research should establish the basic research category with the development of consciousness in academic community.

Residents’ organized participation in urban community public services can effectively address the challenges posed by disorderly and sporadic participation. This article explores factors that influence residents’ organized participation in urban community public service. Adopting constructivist grounded theory, this research identifies 11 factors, including subject value identification and subject participation ability. The 11 factors are then classified into three dimensions, including subject attributes, subject interaction channels, and service composition. By learning their interconnections, this research further reveals the mechanisms through which these influencing factors affect residents’ organized participation. The article further proposes that policy innovations are needed to promote residents’ organized participation in urban community public services through strengthening multiple subject participation forces based on subject attributes, constructing and developing channels for resident organized subject interaction, and enriching community public service types.

Through three iterations of social work practice courses, the method of educational action research is used to continuously refine the teaching content and explore ways to enhance students’ knowledge transformation. The findings suggest that students’ knowledge transformation is characterized by the strengthening of beliefs, the accumulation of practical experience, and the reconstruction of personal values. Students navigate various processes during their knowledge transformation, including addressing practice challenges, reflecting on their practices, engaging in discussions centered on practice, and developing practical guidelines. This process encompasses from activating and reconstructing theoretical knowledge to constructing and generating, externalizing and sharing, as well as internalizing and integrating practical knowledge. It also highlights the importance of establishing good relationships between participants in the educational setting to facilitate this transformation process.

China’s mandatory reporting system for child protection was established relatively late, and research on this system has yet to develop a clear framework. This article adopts the evidence-based method of systematic review to select, include and analyze Chinese research literature, aiming to outline the characteristics and orientations of existing studies on China’s mandatory reporting system for child protection. Through this systematic review, the paper identifies four primary orientations in China’s research regarding the mandatory reporting system: policy improvement, reporting mechanisms, theoretical linkage, and case identification. Additionally, through an in-depth analysis of each orientation, we propose four research initiatives for China’s mandatory child protection reporting system, including the development of a multidisciplinary theoretical framework, a shift towards localisation-oriented policy research, an expansion of research on the identification of the situation of each reporting subject, and an exploration of reporting mechanism at the social level.

Social Worker’s Professional Level Examination (SWPLE) has been administered for 14 years since 2008, with a cumulative total of approximately 200,000 people having earned the relevatn certificates. To examine the content validity of this authoritative test, this study draws on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Anderson and colleagues’ revisions as the frame. Adopting quantitative content analysis, this study analyzes the knowledge categories and cognition processes of the items of the three courses of SWPLE during 2008-2021, including the Intermediate Level Social Work Comprehensive Competence Test (ILSWCCT), the Intermediate Level Social Work Practice Competence Test (ILSWPCT), and the Social Work Law and Policy (SWLP). The results reveal that the SWPLE test mainly examines declarative knowledge (i.e., theorical knowledge) rather than procedural knowledge (i.e., practice knowledge); SWPLE mainly tests the cognitive processes at a lower level such as memorization, and ignores to examine more advanced cognitive processes (such as analysis, evaluation and application). These findings indicate that SWPLE does not examine what it claims to examine and is not a valid test. These findings have significant implications for the promotion of validity of SWPLE.

This study uses NVivo12 Plus qualitative research software to conduct word frequency, coding, and cluster analysis on 25 policy documents related to elderly meal assistance services at both provincial and national levels. The research shows that elderly meal assistance services in China are still at an initial development stage. Provinces are actively implementing the central policy directives and expanding the scope of elderly meal assistance services. However, there is a general lack of reliable legal frameworks, insufficient attention to the sustainable operation of meal assistance points, and ambiguity surrounding the scope and implementation standards of value-added services. Further to that, there is a need to enhance focus on the effectiveness of policy implementation. In the future, provinces should improve the legal and regulatory construction in the field of elderly meal assistance services, pay attention to the sustainable development of elderly meal assistance services, clarify the scope and implementation standards of value-added services, and emphasize the effectiveness of policy implementation to promote the standardized and professional development of elderly meal assistance services.

Based on the 2020 Chinese Family Panel Survey (CFPS) data, latent class analysis is used to identify the types of inter-generational support in urban and rural families, and OLS regression is used to analyze the impacts of inter-generational support types on the depression of urban and rural adolescents. It is found that: there is a significant difference in the depression levels between urban and rural adolescents, the depression level of rural adolescents is higher than that of urban adolescents, especially reflecting in hard work, happiness, joy and sadness factors; there is no significant difference in the depression levels between rural left-behind adolescents and non-left-behind adolescents; there are two types of inter-generational support in urban and rural families, named as “alienation and weak function” (35.17%) and “intimity and strong function” (64.83%); there is no significant difference in the types of inter-generational support between urban and rural teenagers, rural left-behind adolescents and non-left-behind adolescents; the types of inter-generational support only have a significant impact on the depression of rural adolescents, inter-generational support of “alienation and weak function” has an inhibitory effect, while inter-generational support of “ intimity and strong function” has an enhancement effect, especially reflecting in low mood and hard life factors; there is obvious difference in the impacts of inter-generational support types on the depression between rural left-behind adolescents and non-left-behind adolescents, inter-generational support of “alienation and weak function” has an inhibitory effect on the depression of rural left-behind adolescents, while inter-generational support of “ intimity and strong function” has an inhibitory effect on the depression of rural non-left-behind adolescents, especially reflecting in low mood, hard work and sadness factors.

As an important part of the urban built environment, community parks have a vital impact on improving residents’ health. Based on the Web of Science database, the article systematically reviewed the research trends and hotspots of community park and health related international literature using the bibliometric method. The analysis found that: Community parks and health research rose in the early 21st century and has gradually become the focus of preventive medicine, health geography, sociology, environmental psychology, urban planning, landscape architecture and other disciplines, with a steady growth of literature; The health benefits of community parks cover physical health, mental health and social health. The research hotspots focus on five aspects: physical activity, mental healing, ecosystem services, social interaction and the impact on health benefits; In recent years, the balanced layout and reasonable allocation of community park green space have become a hot topic in the research on residents’ health improvement and urban space environment optimization.

Community governance often encounters challenges such as fragmentation and the differentiation of subjects, which have significantly impede to the development of a cohesive community within primary-level social governance. The proposition of the “Wu She Liandong (linkages between community organizations)” mechanism has offered new avenues for resolving such problems. However, in practice, the phenomenon of “linked yet inactive” among community organizations persists in grassroots social governance, making it difficult for collaborative governance among multiple subjects to operate effectively. This article aims to understand the underlying mechanisms that contribute to this phenomenon. Adopting the grassroots social governance ecology and the grassroots social governance community as theoretical perspectives, through on-site investigations in X Street, Shanghai, this article discovers that the profound mechanism that molds the “Wu She Liandong Being Linked Yet Inactive” lies in the deficiency of ecological construction in grassroots social governance. Specifically, the organizational ecology, public welfare ecology, service ecology, and participation ecology in community governance have not been fostered, thereby failing the five sectors to form an organically integrated relationship, which restricts the modernization process and the exertion of the efficacy of grassroots social governance.

Based on Robbins’ stress model and the theory of emotional labor, this study explores the mediating mechanisms of emotional labor between work stress and turnover intention among social workers. Emotional labor is divided into two aspects: work satisfaction and occupational burnout, and analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results of analyzing survey data on the China Social Work Longitudinal Survey indicate that work satisfaction and occupational burnout mediate the relationship between job stress and turnover intention. Work satisfaction negatively influences the relationship between work stress and turnover intention, implying that higher work satisfaction is associated with lower occupational burnout and turnover intention. Conversely, occupational burnout positively influences the relationship, suggesting that higher burnout increases turnover intention. Additionally, professional qualifications play a moderating role in this context.

The mechanism of the “Linkage of Five Elements in the community” has been integrated into the development of social work stations, playing a crucial role in innovating grassroots social governance. This study investigates optimization pathways for collaborative governance within this framework through a case study approach grounded in collaborative governance theory, drawing on empirical data from social work station practices in Zhejiang Province, China. Research has found that the development of resources related to the “Linkage of Five Elements in the community” follows a structred pattern. The collaborative governance of the mechanism of “Five Elements Linkage” unfolds in three sequential phases: “forming governance concepts”, “constructing governance mechanisms”, and “improving governance effectiveness”. These phases are characterized by platform-based integration, localized adaptation, and professionalization, with vertical-horizontal synergies facilitating multi-agent coordination. However, challenges persist, including tensions between service objectives and implementation processes, inadequate resource mobilization and inter-agent collaboration, limited capacity for sustainable synergy, and insufficient professionalization. To address these issues, the study proposes optimization strategies that emphasize motivational alignment, endogenous capacity-building, and institutional restructuring. Furthermore, it highlights the necessity of leveraging the Party-government leadership to empower stakeholders, foster consensus-driven goals, and catalyze collective action. Ultimately, this framework aims to enhance service quality and activate community endogenous vitality, offering both theoretical and practical insights for refining collaborative governance models in grassroots social innovation contexts.

“Does social work work?” This question addresses the crucial issue of recognizing the value of social work that the social work community has been striving for over a century. This study conducts a systematic review of service effectiveness reviews in social work literature in English academic publications. Through a scientific search strategy, this article adopts 52 pieces of literature as the sample for analysis. The result suggests that social work effectiveness has undergone the process from being ineffective to partially effective and then to the stage where specific interventions are effective for specific targets in specific contexts. Specifically, current evaluation research in social work suggests new trends and characteristics in terms of situational characteristics, the intervention process, the factors of assessment, and the utilization of results. These findings offer valuable insights for the construction of a productive social work service system in China.

The assessment of policy effectiveness has focused on measuring the extent to which the overall policy goals have been achieved. Guided by the theoretical model of policy goal achievement evaluation, this paper establishes an index system that integrates both factual data and value-based criteria to evaluate policy effectiveness and identify influencing factors. This paper adopts the multi-dimensional evaluation method which includes eight key dimensions: benefit, efficiency, adequacy, economy, fairness, responsiveness, appropriateness and stability. Data were collected through questionnaire survey and expert interview in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. The analytic hierarchy process was used to determine the weight of indicators, while the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method quantified the policy effect. The results show that the overall effectiveness of the policy is high, especially in terms of adequacy and benefit, while f responsiveness and fairness demonstrate lower performance. Disparities exist between urban and rural areas as well as regional differences. Further analysis of the factors influencing policy effectiveness, employing the Horn-Mitter model, revealed that policy objectives and standards, resources, implementation and intervention, and environmental conditions significantly affect outcomes. The research shows that policy implementation and intervention are the core of policy effectiveness, while policy standards and objectives play a “baton” role. It is recommended that policymakers prioritize fairness and responsiveness in future policy formulations, and enhance urban-rural and regional equity to batter meet the needs of the elderly.

In the era of artificial intelligence, advances in technology have significantly enhanced social productivity and efficiency, transferring much material or productive labor to machines or automated systems, while “immaterial labor” has become the primary form of human labor. Social work, as a form of immaterial labor, embodies dual values: creativity and emotionality, which are particularly important in the AI era. This paper explores the creative and emotional values of professional social work and analyzes its legitimacy and justification in the context of AI. This paper proposes four dimensions of AI-enabled social work: low creativity with high emotionality, high creativity with high emotionality, high creativity with low emotionality, and low creativity with low emotionality. The integration of AI and social work is an inevitable trend. By effectively integrating social work with AI, it is possible to achieve a complementary advantage between AI and social workers, promoting the liberation of both the form and substance of labor.

With the continuous expansion of government-funded social work services, social work is emerging as a vital professional force in social governance, garnering increasing attention from both the government and society. A significant challenge confronting the field is how to evaluate the professionalism and effectiveness of its services scientifically. The CIPP model, known for its systematic, comprehensive, and improvement-oriented approach, is particularly suited for evaluating social work projects. This study employs the CIPP model to evaluate the rural childcare program of Institution H, integrating the Delphi method to construct an evaluation index system that supplements and optimizes the existing framework. Through assessments of the project’s context, input, process, and outcomes, the study provides improvement recommendations, such as increasing the budget for enhancing social workers’ professional capabilities, deepening needs assessments, prioritizing service quality, refining service plans, and improving supervision efficiency. To refine and optimize the social work evaluation system, it is crucial to establish a feedback-oriented evaluation mechanism, emphasize the professional development of social work, and shift from audit-focused evaluations to empowerment-based assessments. This approach ensures the dual objectives of performance evaluation and professional growth, ultimately achieving “improvement through evaluation” and “correction through evaluation.”

Community workers constitute a pivotal force in community governance, and practical dilemmas in their professionalization process directly impede the enhancement of grassroots social governance capacity. Employing participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study investigates the professional dilemmas encountered by certified community workers and their corresponding coping strategies against the backdrop of intertwined administrative and professional demands. The findings reveal that under the interplay of dual institutional logics, the professional dilemmas of these workers manifest in three dimensions: decision-making conflicts, role conflicts, and practice conflicts. Specifically, they grapple with balancing limited energy against multiple demands, confront ambiguities in their positioning between administrative and professional roles, and encounter disjunctions between professional knowledge and practical operations. In response to these challenges, certified community workers have developed four types of coping strategies: situational adaptation, integrative coordination, defensive adjustment, and relational mobilization. These strategies not only enable them to maintain efficient and stable work performance in complex institutional contexts but also reflect how the dual tensions between administrative requirements and professional practice shape their professional experiences. Future research on relevant topics should prioritize examining the work experiences and dilemmas of frontline community workers in complex institutional environments, with a view to enhancing the overall effectiveness of community governance.

This paper explores the values, current situations, challenges and future developments of the implementation of evidence-based social work. An evidence-based approach would be valuable in promoting the qualities of social work services, improving the recognition of social work in both the professional community and the society at large, and the integration of social work research and practice. However, there are significant challenges in the execution of evidence-based practice, including the executive-led issue, limited time and capacity for social workers, insufficient organizational support, as well as concerns about the use of evidence. The study reveals a lack of understanding of evicence-based social work among both social workers and undergraduate social work students, indicating underdevelopment in this area. To overcome such barriers requires evidence-based education that actively promotes the value and effectiveness of evidence-based practice. An updated curriculum and revised handbooks that incorporates elements of evidence-based practice is also suggested. Additionally, educators in higher education should collaborate with frontline social workers to promote the integration of research and practice.

During the phase of deepening grassroots social governance, mental health community rehabilitation services have emphasized on the integration of risk management and daily life recovery, the expansion of service socialization, and the strengthening of the systemic continuity of service connections. However, there are still numerous obstacles that make integration difficult within the interdepartmental, multidisciplinary community rehabilitation services. This study aims to explore the integration methodsbased on a participatory action research in Shenzhen Nanshan District Community Mental Health Project. The study suggests that the integration of services can be achieved by cultivating professional social workers of mental health prevention and treatment as case managers. These social workers can provide humanistic care through daily visits, establish cooperative relationships with patients and families, and improve the coordination of service mechanisms. This approach to integrated services is based on the logic of clinical-institutional integration, differing from the traditional clinically oriented biopsychosocial model by placing a stronger emphasis on the “social” dimension of integration. This approach meets the dual requirements of grassroots social governance for a person-centered approach and public safety. Moreover, because it is rooted in the community’s daily life scene, it contributes to advancing the refinement of mental health community services and the development of a secure community public space.

Community rehabilitation services are crucial for the well-being of disabled children and their families. Our survey of disabled children and community rehabilitation stations in LX reveals issues of insufficient service supply and a lack of diversity in service providers, hindering the fulfillment of the diverse needs of disabled children. Developmental social work emphasizes the coordinated development of economy and society. Community-based, empowering and advantageous approaches, and comprehensive interventions in social work are marking the transition from a clinical intervention paradigm to a developmental paradigm. The practical aspects of developmental social work are instrumental in restructuring the community rehabilitation service system for disabled children, forming a needs-oriented, community-based, and multi-provider-supported evaluation and classification service system for disabled children, which is of great significance for improving the rehabilitation assistance system for disabled children.

In social work education, the practice reflexivity of teachers and students has plays a key role in knowledge production. Classrooms serve not only as spaces for knowledge transfer but also as environments for experience reference and knowledge co-creation. The professional relationship holds an important position in the social work knowledge system, forming the foundation of social work practice. By reflexively organizing past experiences of professional relations, teachers provide students with the experience reference and the local knowledge to understand the relationship between themselves, their community, and their future professional community, so as to stimulate students’ motivation to explore professional relationships. At the same time, teachers engage in dialogues with students’ experience texts regarding their inquiry into their relationship with the communities to enhance learning. When students’ community experience is organically integrated into the teaching, the connection between knowledge and teachers and students is strengthened. In this teaching process, students can not only acquire the relevant knowledge and experience of professional relationships but also experience the practical process of integrating personal experience and professional knowledge. This will further promote the organic combination of education, practice, and research, realize the knowledge production function of social work education, and promote the construction of the local knowledge of social work.

As social work continues to develop in China, particularly with the establishment of the Society Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, macro social work is increasingly demonstrating its significant value. Macro social work emphasizes a holistic perspective and intervention in social issues, focusing on social structural problems and adopting a comprehensive approach that aligns with the professional advancement of social work and the social transformation in this country. Based on the in-depth analysis of local context, it is evident that county-level social work serves as a crucial pathway for macro social work in China, and plays a vital role in the overall development of China’s social work in the new stage. Guided by the theory of macro social work, county-level social work needs to insist on principles that including being goal-oriented, guided by planning, integrated with specific characteristics, focused on promoting practice, and enhancing capabilities. It is also crucial to establish a system mechanism to foster the high-quality development of social work in China.

Based on self-determination theory and service-dominant logic, this article constructs a value co-creation behavior model for elderly consumers, exploring the impact of social loneliness and emotional loneliness on elderly consumers’ value co-creation behavior in the torism consumption context. .It further examines the mediating effect of coping strategies on the relationship between loneliness and elderly consumers’ value co-creation behavior. The study finds that social loneliness and emotional loneliness are positively related to the value co-creation behavior of the elderly consumers in tourism consumption. Social loneliness has a stronger positive impact than emotional loneliness in this behavior. The study also reveals that active coping strategies mediate the relationship between loneliness and the value co-creation behavior. In addition, the research discusses the moderating effect of perceived time constraints, providing insights into the situational conditions under which the value co-creation behavior of elderly consumers can be strengthened. The conclusions of this research can inform product development and service design for old consumers.

The core objective of empowering elderly care services through intelligent assistive technology lies in achieving both precision and humanization of care by reconstructing service delivery via technological mediation. At its essence, this transformation represents a dynamic balance between algorithmic power and human-centered values. The evolutionary trajectory of technological logic indicates that while the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) architectures and multimodal sensing systems can enhance service efficiency, it also gives rise to emerging legal risks—such as the substantive failure of informed consent mechanisms due to cognitive decline in the elderly, the privacy threats posed by pervasive surveillance technologies, and the difficulty in identifying clear legal responsibility among actors. In response, legal regulation must construct a dual-adjustment mechanism of “technology-adapted law” and “law-guided technology”: on the operational level, a layered informed consent framework for aging populations should be established, with simplified interfaces and strengthened algorithmic interpretation rights to safeguard decision autonomy; in the data governance dimension, a dynamic “right to be forgotten” system should be introduced, along with innovative “machine forgetting” technical standards to ensure control over the data lifecycle. In terms of legal responsibility, a multi-layered legal responsibility system should be constructed, with a “responsibility chain allocation mechanism” based on technological processes and a “gradient responsibility system for risk sharing” to allocate liability proportionate to the ability to control risks and the benefits accrued.

The positive role of evidence-based social work in promoting the effectiveness of social work, facilitating the professionalization of social work, and bridging the gap between theory and practice makes it a possible strategy for achieving “good practice” in social work. However, evidence-based social work, which emerged in Western societies, has both value and limitations in Chinese practice. This paper discusses the development of evidence-based social work in China by sorting out and analyzing the value and limitations of evidence-based social work in the exploration of local practice in China, and discusses the development of evidence-based social work in China from the perspective of the Western experience of developing evidence-based social work education, building an evidence review system, creating an evidence repository, and establishing a system for the dissemination of evidence, as well as from the perspective of the construction of a local knowledge system in the context of Chinese practice. The development of evidence-based social work in China should not only focus on learning from the experience of institutionalizing and building evidence in Western evidence-based social work, reflecting its scientific nature, but also focus on programmatic research that is consistent with China’s social construction and social governance, reflecting the intrinsic characteristics of evidence-based social work in China.

Social service assessment is a performance evaluation method for government-purchased social services, aiming to optimise the quality of social services. In the process of social service assessment, multiple actors are involved, and these actors are all in a specific institutional environment, with their own institutional logics that are changing. Hence, this study situates institutional logics and their evolution at the focal point of analysis. It is found that under the effect of multiple institutional logic changes, social service evaluation will encounter autonomy, publicity dilemma, and credibility dilemmas. To address these challenges, it is crucial to find ways to promote the reproduction of autonomy in social service evaluation, enhance the evaluation control of service users, and reshape the credibility of each evaluation subject.

The accessibility of basic public services in border areas, recognized as a disadvantaged zone in terms of public services, requires urgent attention. Taking the township social work stations in Jingxi City as an example, this article examines hows these border social work stations enhance the accessibility of basic public services through four key dimensions: “availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability”. The study found that the government optimizes the allocation of resources in border regions to achieve full coverage of social work stations in townships, which enhances the accessibility of basic public services. Social workers, following their commitment to assist individuals and informed by real-life practices, provide inclusive services to all border residents, thus promoting equal access to basic public services. Social work services emphasize empowering and improving the capacity of service users, which in turn promotes the acceptability of basic public services. Furthermore, Social workers also prioritize cultural sensitivity, respecting local cultural and ethnic customs to enhance the adaptability of basic public services. Border social work stations work together to promote the accessibility of basic public services in border areas by constructing a mechanism for the synergy of diverse service subjects, reshaping the mechanism of community publicity, and empowering border residents to form an internal and external cooperation mechanism with the community.

Through text mining based on the community home care service policy texts issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, The State Council and relevant departments, this research innovatively adopts TM-PMC to construct a quantitative evaluation index system for community home care service policy, offering countermeasures and suggestions for sustainable development and improvement of community home care service policy. Twelve representative policies are selected and evaluated. The results show that among the twelve selected policies, two are classified as excellent, eight as good, and two policies as acceptable, with no policies deemed bad. The overall quality of the community home care service policy is satisfactory, although there remains potential for futher development and enhancement. Based on these findings, suggestions are put forward to improvement.

Relying on the Diathesis-Stress Model and the tripartite model of depression and anxiety, this study examines how school interpersonal relationships (i.e., teacher-student relationship and peer relationship) influence the mental health of rural children (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress) and compares the differences between left-behind and non-left-behind children. Using a sample of 452 rural children from W County in China, the study employs hierarchical regression analysis to reveal that peer relationship and teacher-student relationship significantly influence the mental health of rural children, with peer relationship exerting a stronger influence than teacher-student relationship. Furthermore, significant differences are found in how school interpersonal relationships affect levels of depression between left-behind and non-left-behind children, indicating that the impact of teacher-student relationship and peer relationship on depression is more pronounced among left-behind children. This study provides empirical evidence for the development of targeted social work intervention programs and offers suggestions for the improvement of relevant policies.

Drawing on the data from the “Chinese Social Survey 2023”, this study utilizes the Ordinary Least Squares regression (OLS regression) to dissect the influence of internet usage frequency on the volunteer service participation of the grey-haired group. The research findings demonstrate that, in general, the participation rates of the grey-haired group in volunteer services are comparatively low, and the varieties of volunteer services are restricted in China. Notably, the frequency of internet usage exhibits a significant positive correlation with the grey-haired group’s volunteer service participation, which means that the more frequently they use the internet, the higher their level of engagement in volunteer services. In addition, social capital can also have a marked and positive impact on the grey-haired group’s volunteer service participation. However, it does not serve as a mediator between internet usage and engagement in voluntary services. Consequently, initiatives aimed at promoting active aging, enhancing the digital literacy of the grey-haired group and optimizing the internet’s transformative potential in relation to the grey-haired group’s social capital are crucial for facilitating the grey-haired group’s participation in volunteer services.

Guided by Honneth’s recognition theory, this paper adopts the method of typical case study to explore the recognition process of the S organization in Baoshan City, a border ethnic region. Combining multiple recognition subjects, dual recognition dimensions and life cycle process, the way the S organization obtains recognition is constructed as a life cycle model of the recognition process. In the initial stage, the growth stage, and the stable stage, self-recognition, government recognition, and social recognition show different characteristics, which promote the development of S organization, but also encounter a certain degree of contempt and challenge. Social work organizations in border ethnic areas need to recognize the spiral process of recognition and strive for breakthroughs in realistic situations.

The Student Assistance Program is a comprehensive project service that focuses on meeting the personalized and diversified needs of college students and helping disadvantaged student groups improve their psychosocial abilities. Integrating the concepts and methods of social work into the Student Assistance Program is of great significance to the development of college students and the improvement of the Student Assistance Program. Social work could play vital roles at various levels of the Student Assistance Program. At the micro level, it can use interpersonal communication and empowerment strategies to promote students’ personal development; at the meso level, it focuses on the construction of social capital and community development to enhance students’ social support networks; at the macro level, it focuses on the advocacy and implementation of social welfare policies to improve students’ overall well-being. At present, the Student Assistance Program faces challenges such as a shortage of professionals and limited service reach. In the future, it should emphasize the design of intervention strategies based on local conditions and classification, making full use of the advantages of methods, technologies and policies, and, at the same time, pay attention to Chinese social and cultural traditions to promote the localization and specialization of services.

Human capital has a significant impact on the turnover intention of social workers. Educational human capital has a significant direct positive impact, skilled human capital has a significant direct negative impact, while the impact of healthy human capital is not significant, indicating that there are type differences in the impact of human capital. Both educational human capital and skill human capital indirectly affect the turnover intention of social workers through the mediation of job satisfaction, indicating the complexity of the impact path of human capital. There is a certain degree of intergenerational difference in the impact of educational human capital and skill human capital on the turnover intention of social workers, indicating that the impact of human capital is intergenerational. It is necessary to take relevant measures based on the specific mechanisms and effects of human capital on the turnover intention of social workers, in order to reduce their turnover intention.