The year 2025 represents a critical juncture at which China’s social work academia has actively engaged with the imperatives of modernizing social governance. Centering on the threefold dimensions of “knowledge, service, and ecology”, scholarly discussions have coalesced around eight core themes, yielding substantial theoretical and practical advances. In the knowledge dimension, research has focused on constructing an independent knowledge system for social work, catalyzing a paradigm shift from “professional embeddedness” to “institutional coordination”, and extracting practical wisdom from localized practice through reflexive indigenization. In the service dimension, studies have examined social work’s roles in grassroots governance, urban-rural integration, services for groups in need, and comprehensive health, highlighting contextually attuned innovations that further integrate professional practice with China’s distinctive social realities. In the ecological dimension, inquiries have addressed emerging challenges in organizational forms and professional workforce development, new progresses in the digital and intelligent transformation of social work, and evolving conditions in social work education. These efforts have collectively contributed to the construction of a sustainable professional ecosystem encompassing organizational structures, technological empowerment, and talent cultivation. Among these, county-level social work, social work targeting new employment groups, and artificial intelligence-driven social work have emerged as salient research frontiers. To advance the high-quality development of social work, future research should strengthen the construction of its knowledge system and explore professional intervention models, thereby demonstrating the discipline’s unique advantages in serving the modernization of national governance and addressing people’s aspirations for a better life.

Empowering the construction of child-friendly communities with digital intelligence is of great significance in promoting the high-quality development of child welfare. Drawing on new ecological perspectives and extending Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory into the digital domain, this study develops a hierarchical and progressive framework of digital ecosystems to elucidate the practical trajectory of “whole-system digital empowerment”. The study concludes that digital intelligence technologies primarily facilitate child-friendly communities by constructing integrated physical-virtual environments, establishing technology-driven collaborative networks, consolidating integrated and efficient digital platforms, and refining child-friendly policies and cultural development. However, practical implementation may be hindered by capacity disparities, conflicting interests between stakeholders, technological limitations, and institutional deficiencies, which can potentially lead to “technological disempowerment”. Therefore, it is imperative to enhance digital literacy, optimize collaborative mechanisms, strengthen value-based guidance, and improve policy support to advance the development of child-friendly communities from an experience-driven 1.0 model to a digital intelligent, evidence-based 2.0 stage.

Digitalization, as a “fully realized social fact,” offers unprecedented opportunities for social work while simultaneously raising complex ethical challenges that demand proactive identification and systematic responses. The digital cultural environment in social work refers to the integrated context shaped by the application of digital technologies and the cultural values they embody. Such environment is instrumental in aligning digital technologies with the ethical principles of social work, thereby safeguarding the effective practice of professional ethics. Currently, social work in China exhibits distinct characteristics across three domains (institutions, services, and education) during digital transformation, each confronted with distinct ethical dilemmas. Specifically, the digital transformation of social work institutions is challenged by issues of privacy protection and informed consent. In the realm of service delivery, the digital transformation has introduced concerns such as algorithmic bias, service disruptions, and blurred boundaries of responsibilities. Within social work education, the digital transformation complicates the establishment of professional relationships and the cultivation of ethical sensitivity. In response, social work practitioners are called upon to lead the development of the digital cultural environment for social work, strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration with the technology sector, enhance ethically informed technology design, set rigorous standards for technological access and application, and institute robust, nuanced ethical training programs to systematically mitigate ethical risks.

Studying the mechanisms influencing career women’s fertility intentions provides critical insight into the underlying factors contributing to China’s declining fertility rate. Based on self-determination theory, this study used a sample of 1,744 women aged 20 to 49 years and employed structural equation modeling combined with Bootstrap confidence interval testing to delineate the pathways through which the three basic psychological needs--autonomy, competence, and relatedness—along with internal fertility motivation, and external fertility expectations affect career women’s fertility intentions. The empirical results show that basic psychological needs directly influence career women’s fertility intentions, with autonomy, competence, and relatedness all having a significant positive effect. Internal fertility motivation significantly mediates the relationship between career women’s basic psychological needs and fertility intentions. Additionally, the mediation effect of internal fertility motivation on the direct association between autonomy and fertility intention is moderated by external fertility motivation. The study also reveals that fertility motivation and intentions decrease across generations for women born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, while rural upbringing and lower educational levels are associated with higher fertility intentions.

Dyadic coping plays a crucial role in the joint management of stress among couples and exerts a significant influence on the psychological adjustment among women experiencing infertility. This study examined the mechanisms linking fertility stress, dyadic coping, and mental health among a cohort of 382 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment. The findings indicate that: (1) fertility stress directly predicts higher levels of anxiety and depression; (2) negative dyadic coping significantly mediates the relationship between fertility stress and psychological distress, whereas positive dyadic coping does not show a significant mediating effect; (3) although positive and negative dyadic coping are interrelated, the negative pathway dominates in the stress transmission process. From a medical social work perspective, the study proposes a structured four-stage intervention model—initial assessment, treatment support, post-treatment support, and long-term adaptation—to improve couples’ coping strategies and enhance the mental health and quality of life of women facing infertility.

Based on social ecosystem theory, this study utilizes survey data from 598 adolescents residing in a resettlement area for relocation programs in ST County, Shaanxi Province, and applies hierarchical regression analysis to examine the impact of social supports from family, school, and community on adolescents’ problem behaviors. It’s found that parental care, teacher care, and community residents’ friendliness are significantly and negatively correlated with adolescents’ problem behaviors, indicating that the higher the level of social supports, the lower the incidence of problem behaviors. Among these factors, teacher care exerts the strongest inhibitory effect, followed by parental care, while the effect of residents’ friendliness is relatively weaker. Moreover, a mutual weakening effect is observed between the inhibitory effect of teacher care and residents’ friendliness. The robustness test results are highly consistent with the regression analyses, demonstrating the reliability of the conclusions. The impacts of social supports on adolescents’ problem behaviors are obviously heterogeneous: male adolescents are more susceptible to the effects of teacher and peer care, while female adolescents are more strongly influenced by parental care; junior high school students are more influenced by teacher and parental care than primary school students. Furthermore, residents’ friendliness has a significant negative impact only on non-relocated adolescents. Therefore, it is essential to build a collaborative support network involving family, school, and community, and to implement differentiated intervention strategies tailored to the specific needs of different adolescent groups.

Drawing upon data from the 2020 survey of the “Social Capital, Intergenerational Solidarity, and Mental Health Among Chinese Older Adults in Shanghai”, this study examines the associations between social capital, perceived neighborhood environment, and the preferences for aging in place among urban older adults in China. The results showed that both cognitive social capital (trust and reciprocity) and structural social capital indicators (social participation) are positively associated with a stronger preference for aging in place. In contrast, the two dimensions of the community environment, namely public safety and medical conditions, were not significantly associated with such preferences. Therefore, policy and interventions should focus on building and mobilizing community-based social capital, promoting innovative forms of social participation among older adults, and developing age-friendly communities to support aging in place.

The co-production model positions the public as a central actor in the provision of public services, presenting opportunities to reduce service costs while simultaneously enhancing service quality. However, conventional co-production models dominated by design logic often encounter three practical dilemmas: value conflicts, incentive failures, and ambiguous responsibilities, making it difficult to adapt to the rapidly changing social realities effectively. In this context, social enterprises emerge as novel intermediary organizations that may provide innovative solutions to these dilemmas through their roles in communication, conflict mediation, and resource exchange. Drawing on three case studies of social enterprises “government-led, market-led, and community-led” in City C, this study analyzes the hybrid motivation strategies, tool adaptation strategies, and network-building strategies they employ as intermediaries. Through a progressive process of conflict resolution, participation activation, and responsibility clarification, these strategies facilitate proactive adaptations to mitigate the structural dilemmas of co-production. Overall, the social enterprise perspective enriches the existing co-production theory by expanding the understanding of participating actors and the dynamics of role processes, while also offering new insights and methodologies for the practices of public service production in urban communities.

At the backdrop of emerging business models, the integration of new employment groups into grassroots governance has become an important issue both theoretically and practically. Drawing on the theoretical framework of “dual absorption and spatial expansion” and the theory of organizational field, this study develops an analytical framework of “dual absorption and multi-dimensional integration” to explore the strategies for integrating the new employment group in the practice of grassroots governance in M District, J City. The research has found that the establishment of a comprehensive Party-building system through the Party’s “embedded organizational absorption” and the creation of Party organizations in new employment fields such as express delivery outlets and distribution platforms, serves to reinforce political guidance. The implementation of “withdrawal service absorption”, anchored in the three-level governance hierarchy of district and sub-district and community, enables the precise alignment of the needs of different groups and the formation of a tailored service delivery mechanism. Through a three-dimensional integrative approach of organization, system, and resources, the intrinsic motivation of new employment groups to participate in grassroots governance can be activated, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of grassroots governance.