2021 is the first year of the “14th Five-Year Plan”, and the innovative development of social work will usher in new development opportunities. This year, a number of high-quality researches emerged around the themes of social work theory construction, effective connection between poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, public health social work, and innovative development of social work education. In order to better promote the development of social work, social work should emphasize theoretical construction and highlight the “Chinese story” of social work development; benchmark the country’s major strategic needs, and lead professional development with high-level research; promote the new infrastructure of social work research to facilitate policy, knowledge and practice innovation; strengthen social work education to establish diversified educational program.

The concept of helping others to self-reliance has entered into Chinese society for a long time, but it is hard to take root in the practice of Chinese social work for cultural barriers. Based on the practical experience of social work in China, this article puts forward the idea and method of helping others by mutual assistance. In addition, it corrects and supplements the idea of helping people to help themselves originated from the western cultural and social situation and individualism as well as influenced by the behavioristic psychology to achieve the new era of innovation. As an alternative approach, helping people by mutual assistance can focus on the reciprocal assistance between people, and between people and society in Chinese culture, which reshapes the meaning, relationship and action structure of social work to promote the sustainable development of Chinese social work.

As an important institutional arrangement in poverty alleviation, social assistance is also the origin of social work practice. This article discusses the coupling path of social assistance and social work. By applying the method of action research and taking a social work service program as a case, the research constructs the integrated practice model of social work from “whole process & broader range” clinical practice. “Whole process” here refers to the whole process of needs assessment, service distribution, follow-up and support and effectiveness evaluation. “Broader range” refers to the intervention at four levels, including individual-micro environment, group-micro environment, individual-macro environment and group-macro environment. “Clinical” refers to the goal of solving problems, meeting the needs and recovery of function. In addition, action research shows that the integrated practice model can not only provide targeted, accurate and professional services for social assistance recipients but also help the construction of social work knowledge in the field of social assistance.

The relationship between the state and the social work profession has always been a basic issue discussed in both the academic and practical fields. Centering on the social work intervention for elderly care, this article attempts to review and reflect on this mutual relationship from the theoretical perspective of “embedding”. It has found that social work for elderly care experienced an evolutionary process of being separated from the state, focusing on theory but de—embedding in practice, and mutual embedding between state and profession. Specifically, the legitimacy of the social work for elderly care and the embedding of the service space are only obtained from the gap of unsolvable social problems. Therefore, the quality and ability to autonomously respond to the needs of an aging society and promoting effective solutions to the problems of elderly care are the basis for the survival and development of the social work profession for the elderly.

With the promotion of the Healthy China Initiative, social workers have become an important member of the interdisciplinary health care team in China. But they are faced with challenges of unclear professional identity and insufficient specialization. Through follow-up research, the article investigates the interdisciplinary cooperation process in elderly health care of social workers in institution A. It has been found that instead of sticking to the established professional role norms, social workers play multiple roles in the interaction with different actors in health care practice. They should abide by three basic principles which are taking health care as the center, focusing on diversified cooperation and extension and transformation as well as seeing teamwork as the foothold. The research provides a practical and theoretical framework for social workers engaged in health care services.

Focusing on the intention of front-line social workers to stay and analyzing the influence of family support on the will as the core, this research explores effective ways to improve retention and discusses the moderating effect of individual characteristics with a multi-group structural equation model. The results show that: the willingness of front-line social workers to stay is not high; family support is an effective predictor of the intention of first-line social workers; family support takes salaries, working environment and development opportunities as antecedent variables and plays an intermediary role in the effective influence path of each variable towards willingness; the influence path model remains stable among groups of different genders and professional backgrounds, but it is regulated by age and education level. More concretely, front-line social workers under 35 years old with undergraduate education or above have relatively low intention to stay and they are all affected to a larger extent by career development space and family support attitudes.

With the deepening of the aging process, it is imperative to establish and optimize the financing model of “medical and nursing care”. Japan, the United States, Germany and other countries have adopted the "long-term care" pension model, but the financing model is different. The fundraising models for long-term care in Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao in China are also different. At present, the financing model of medical and nursing care in Guangzhou has problems such as insufficient medical insurance support, lack of pluralism in financing entities, difficulty for non-public institutions to enjoy preferential treatment, and failure to set different financing standards. It is recommended to strengthen the responsibilities of the government, improve the laws and regulations on the integration of medical and nursing care, and attract more social forces to participate in the integration of medical and nursing care; and in terms of policy, both private and public medical and nursing institutions should be treated equally, and various preferential policies should be planned from top to bottom, and NGOs should be encouraged to donate charitably through tax exemptions and fee reductions. At the same time, the government needs to use fiscal, taxation, financial and other methods to let the government share the financing responsibility for the combination of medical and nursing care with individuals, non-governmental organizations and enterprises; at the same time, design different financing models to optimize the “combination of medical and nursing care” financing model with Guangzhou characteristics.

Social organization serves as an important supplier of children’s welfare services, so how to play its role has become critical to improve children’s welfare services. Taking the experience of Shanghai as a typical example, this article discusses the interactive relationship between the government and social organizations. It is found that the way of providing services and their contents are far from meeting the needs of children. There are structural and action dilemmas ranging from strong dependence, absence of effective supervision and evaluation mechanism to poor professional services and social mobilization. Therefore, high-quality development of children’s welfare requires promotion from four aspects including encouraging and supporting social organizations to innovate services, building a resource-sharing platform, upgrading service specialization as well as establishing and improving the supervision and constraint mechanism of government procurement for public services.

Based on the community anti-epidemic volunteer project in Daegu, Korea carried by the China Association for Social Work Education, the qualitative comparative analysis is applied to analyze 33 cases conducted by 8 service groups. It is found that with the social worker-dominant derivative model, joint plural subject pattern, pilot models for non-social workers and other typical transfer methods, the establishment of international ethnic Chinese community-supported network of “public support, mutual assistance and self help” will maximize the effectiveness of transnational welfare transmission which is accurate, stable, comprehensive and benefitable.

A large number of young and middle-aged people in rural areas go out to work and migrate, resulting in the widespread trouble of left-behind rural elderly. Based on the analysis of survey data, it is found that the left-behind rural elderly are facing economic poverty, physical and mental vulnerability, obvious characteristics of the “differential pattern” of the life care network, and lack of spiritual comfort. It analyzes the dilemma of multiple welfare supply such as single supply subject, insufficient total welfare supply, structural imbalance, defects in the decision-making mechanism and short of supervision mechanism. Proposed measures include giving play to the government’s role in service, promoting supply cooperation between the government and the market, harnessing advantages of professional social work and social organizations, and establishing a sound supervision and coordination mechanism. Finally, with features of economic, cultural and social development in Wuling ethnic areas, a new model of management and service for the left-behind elders is put forward, which adheres to the Party’s leadership, holding the government responsible for, and the coordinated participation of social forces.