Identifying which approaches can effectively reduce the need for out-of-home care for children is critically important. Despite the proliferation of different interventions and approaches globally, evidence summaries on this topic are limited. This study is a scoping review using a realist framework to explore what research evidence exists about reducing the number of children and young people in care. Searches of databases and websites were used to identify studies evaluating intervention effect on at least one of the following outcomes: reduction in initial entry to care; increase in family reunification post care. Data extracted from papers included type of study, outcome, type and level of intervention, effect, mechanism and moderator, implementation issues and economic (EMMIE) considerations. Data were coded by: primary outcome; level of intervention (community, policy, organisation, family or child); and type of evidence, using the realist EMMIE framework. This is the first example of a scoping review on any topic using this framework. Evaluated interventions were grouped and analysed according to system-level mechanism. We present the spread of evidence across system-level mechanisms and an overview of how each system-level mechanism might reduce the number of children in care. Implications and gaps are identified.

Intimate partner violence (IPV), early childbearing (ECB) and early marriage (EM) are interconnected to the historical oppression of patriarchal colonialism imposed upon Indigenous peoples throughout the world by colonising nations, such as the UK. The artefacts of colonial oppression persist in both colonising nations and those that have been colonised through social norms of patriarchal oppression perpetuated upon women with far-reaching consequences. Indigenous women of the US experience higher rates of IPV, ECB and EM than any other ethnic group-which pose risks to women's physical, psychological, socioeconomic and educational status. The purpose of this study is to explore Indigenous women's experiences with ECB and EM through a critical ethnography with two US tribes. Through reconstructive analysis the following themes emerged: (i) ECB as a Precursor to Marriage; (ii) Unequal and Overburdened Marriages; (iii) ECB, EM and IPV; and (iv) Continued Harmful Effects of Multiple Abusive Relationships. Indigenous women's experiences of ECB and EM are connected to patriarchal historical oppression that systematically dehumanises and oppresses Indigenous women, who were once treated with respect and esteem. Decolonisation and re-visualisation to promote the status of women and girls are needed to offset women's constrained wellness, socio-political status and safety.

Genetic testing is controversial in adoption with professionals taking different positions on whether children should be protected from genetic information or whether it can be used to assist adoption. In this article, we argue that advances in 'genome-wide' testing add further complications to these debates. Although next-generation sequencing (NGS) and microarray-based technologies can offer high-quality molecular diagnoses for a variety of conditions, they also increase the burden of interpretation. For these reasons, adoption professionals will need to understand the relevance and complexity of biomedical information. Our study explores the accounts of social workers' and medical advisors' knowledge and reasoning about genetic testing in adoption. Twenty participants, including social workers, managers, medical advisors and paediatricians, were recruited from adoption services in England and Wales. A key finding revealed that medical professionals reported increasing pressure to test children prior to adoption, whilst social workers justified testing on the basis that it reduced uncertainty and therefore assisted adoption. Professionals' accounts of genetic testing suggest that social workers may not be aware of the potential of microarray and NGS technologies. This has important implications for adoption because increases in genomic uncertainty can stigmatise children and disadvantage their prospects for adoption.

The article probes the disproportionate impact on marginalised populations to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (COVID-19 is an acronym that stands for coronavirus disease of 2019).. It explores this problematic through research with refugees residing in social housing in Melbourne, Australia. The focus is on the specific pressures facing this cohort with the 2020 deployment, without notice, of armed police to enforce lockdown in the central Melbourne housing high rise tower estates. Our research methodology comprises narrating experiences of a community leader who had direct contact with residents and is a co-author of this article; accounts arising from an African community forum and a review of media sources that are attentive to voice. From a thematic analysis, we found consistency of narrative for a cohort whose voices had previously been excluded from the public domain. The themes were in three key areas: representation and employment of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse social workers and community workers; restoration of human rights to those experiencing state-sanctioned violence; and the application of critical multicultural social work practice. We apply theorising derived from Helen Taylor and Jacques Derrida, and argue that responses to crises should be led by the wisdom of affected communities, in keeping with critical social work theories and practices.

Using three tenets of Critical Race Theory as the analytical lens, namely, counter story-telling, everyday racism and whiteness as privilege, this qualitative study examined the experiences of twenty Black African social workers during the Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic in England. The findings suggest that there was a different and often less favourable application of the rules and policies for Black African social workers in relation to COVID-19 and in comparison to their White peers. In addition, Black African social workers expressed frustration about the inadequacy of risk assessments undertaken to gauge the level of risk posed by continuous engagement with service users. A strong recommendation for culturally responsive leadership is made alongside the need for managers, supervisors and employers to become allies to their staff from Black and other minority ethnic backgrounds.

Disasters do not just affect humans. And humans do not only live with, care for or interact with other humans. In this conceptual article, we explain how animals are relevant to green and disaster social work. Power, oppression and politics are our themes. We start the discussion by defining disasters and providing examples of how three categories of animals are affected by disasters, including in the current COVID-19 pandemic. They are: companion animals (pets), farmed animals (livestock) and free-living animals (wildlife), all of whom we classify as oppressed populations. Intersectional feminist, de-colonising and green social work ideas are discussed in relation to disaster social work. We argue that social work needs to include nonhuman animals in its consideration of person-in-environment, and offer an expanded version of feminist intersectionality inclusive of species as a way forward.

COVID-19 rapidly altered patterns of domestic and family violence, increasing the complexity of women's needs, and presenting new barriers to service use. This article examines service responses in Australia, exploring practitioners' accounts of adapting service delivery models in the early months of the pandemic. Data from a qualitatively enriched online survey of practitioners ( = 100) show the ways services rapidly shifted to engage with clients via remote, technology-mediated modes, as physical distancing requirements triggered rapid expansion in the use of phone, email, video calls and messaging, and many face-to-face interventions temporarily ceased. Many practitioners and service managers found that remote service delivery improved accessibility and efficiency. Others expressed concerns about their capacity to assess risk without face-to-face contact, and were unsure whether new service modalities would meet the needs of all client groups and reflect best practice. Findings attest to practitioners' mixed experiences during this period of rapid service innovation and change, and underline the importance of monitoring emerging approaches to establish which service adaptations are effective for different groups of people, and to determine good practice for combining remote and face-to-face service options in the longer term.

Unprecedented trends of complex humanitarian contexts are unfolding globally, and they are driven by numerous humanitarian crisis drivers. Two of the more recent and ongoing crisis drivers are the Coronavirus Pandemic 2019 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. While the pandemic has already caused a direct impact on unprepared health systems and caused secondary havoc on already fragile countries, the BLM movement has exposed the deeply held structural inequalities experienced by populations who do not identify as Western European. Both crisis drivers have also exposed the structural problems that have long underpinned humanitarian responses. To prepare for these complexities in humanitarian contexts, social work educators need to respond to the loud outcry for holistically educated and critically reflective social work practitioners. We argue this can be achieved through an Intercultural Social Work Curriculum informed by First Nations world views to enable a shift in student mindset from Western thought, setting the foundations for professional intercultural practice in complex humanitarian contexts.

Social work education in Australia in the midst of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) would not have been possible under our pre-pandemic accreditation standards due to assumptions about best practice in higher education that were not possible to enact during the pandemic. Rather than immediately arguing for a new set of standards, as Heads of Social Work programmes the authors of this paper promoted a principles-led approach to inform 'the right' way-in an ethical sense-of ensuring social work education could continue in Australia during the pandemic. This meant conceptualising the challenges of delivering social work education in a pandemic as being not only practical but also ethical in their nature. Using examples of how this approach guided the design of adaptive online teaching and field education placements at our universities, we consider the future possibilities for ethical and rules-based governance approaches to social work education. How students learn is changing and what they are learning will help them respond to the immediate and future needs arising from the pandemic. As such, rather than having their education compromised by COVID-19, social work students at the time of the pandemic and into the future may in fact benefit from the changes that have emerged during this period.

This exploratory study focuses on the personal and professional concerns of Israeli social workers in hospitals and community health settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Other studies omitted health care social workers' needs and concerns. Participants included 126 social workers (120 females, 5 males and 1 other gender identity) in hospitals and community health settings who completed an online survey during the height of the first wave of COVID-19 in Israel. Measures included questions on exposure to COVID-19, sense of safety at work, perceived support, and personal and professional concerns. Two open-ended questions about the social workers' concerns and the perceived concerns of their patients were included. The results showed that 17 per cent reported one of their inter-disciplinary team testing positive for COVID-19. Only one-third of the social workers felt safe from COVID-19 infection in their workplace. Mothers of dependent children were more concerned about income loss and about balancing work and family requirements than mothers of older children. 'Home-work conflict' was also a main theme in the qualitative data. In conclusion, the work-home role conflict took an especially heavy toll during the COVID-19 pandemic on social workers who were mothers to dependent children.

This article explores the experiences of social workers at a non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in disaster responses to COVID-19 in a rural and resource-challenged region of Cambodia. The views of Khmer and international social workers in the NGO were gathered through an internal auditing process utilising survey and structured conversation methods. Key themes related to the importance of prioritising the safety of staff and clients, effective communication methods, responsiveness of case management systems, public health responses and adapting to emerging needs. To ensure responsiveness to future disaster events consideration should be given in strengthening partnerships, ensuring case management systems are effective for current use but able to be adapted in new circumstances, and that preparation incorporates a focus on diversified funding streams and open communication channels between staff and management. These elements will enable social workers to continue their practice, reassured and with the flexibility required in the post-disaster context.

Research skills are vital to students' professional careers and must be cultivated in the social work curriculum. While students and faculty may hesitate to participate in a course-based research project, the authors believe that the Photovoice method is easily adapted to a variety of class and student needs. Photovoice is a field-oriented and qualitative research method that visually documents and communicates community assets and needs. The first purpose of this article is to offer Photovoice as a potential model for instructors to implement a course-based research project. The second purpose is to quantitatively assess changes in students' reported confidence in social work topics and research activities. Data revealed that the students reported increased confidence in the majority of the content and research evaluated; content examples include economic justice and determinants of social inequalities; research examples include analysing data for patterns and identifying the limitations of research methods. The data illustrate the pedagogical power of Photovoice.

Literature suggests that, as parents, people with intellectual disabilities experience disproportionately high rates of child removal compared to other groups. A factorial survey of 191 children's social workers investigated the effect of disclosing parental intellectual disability (ID) upon risk assessments in a range of hypothetical child safeguarding scenarios. The case scenarios depicted a range of child safeguarding situations and parents' ID status was randomly included as an additional item of information. The data were fitted into a generalised ordinal logistic regression model. Findings indicate that when presented with scenarios considered to be less risky, the parental ID disclosure contributed significantly to a higher risk assessment score. However, when presented with scenarios that were considered more risky, the additional parental ID disclosure did not significantly contribute to a higher score. These findings indicate that the risk associated with parental ID is not fixed but relative to the situation in which it is encountered. The research concludes that in cases of low risk, the effect of parental ID is identified as a support need, whereas the lesser contribution of the disclosure to assessments of higher risk cases may indicate that parental ID is overlooked.

The United Nations and International Federation of Social Work affirm the right of all people to determine their political status, preserve their environments and pursue endeavours for well-being. This article focuses on CHamoru, Guam's Indigenous people, and examines distal social determinants of health (SDOH) in the contested spaces of US territorial status and non-self-determining Indigenous nationhood. Published multi-disciplinary literature identified ways in which territorial status functions as an SDOH unique to non-self-determining Pacific Island nations. Indicated is the use of structural approaches that address mechanisms of US power and control, including economic policies that 'defacto' promote coca-colonisation and non-communicable diseases risk. Critical race theory centres race, colonisation and subversive narratives. In line with fourth-generation SDOH action-oriented research, we posit a CHamoru critical race theory model that weaves Indigenous, social work and public health perspectives. Lack of community input is a limitation of the current research. To assure relevance, the model will be vetted through community discussions. Our discussion guide may be tailored for other Indigenous communities. Social workers may play a meaningful role in promoting health equity through participatory action-oriented, cultural-political social work that upholds Indigenous self-determination and survivance in contested spaces.

Capacity-building partnerships are central to the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the UN's blueprint for achieving global health equity. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues endorses the SDG and underscores the need for global partnerships that respect local leadership and culture. Innovations that weave or integrate Indigenous and Western knowledges are emphasised. These recommendations guided the INdigenous Samoan Partnership to Initiate Research Excellence (INSPIRE). INSPIRE is led by investigators from American Samoa and supported by US co-investigators. In project year one, INSPIRE queried: What weaving approaches are feasible for promoting community access to INSPIRE's research hub and for training Indigenous researchers? Weaving procedures involved interlacing Samoan and Western knowledges. Cultural tailoring strategies were used to customise communications. Formative evaluation suggests the feasibility of INSPIRE's efforts. Evidential tailoring provided information on American Samoa (A.S.) social determinants of health; trainees indicated increased research commitment. Linguistic and sociocultural relevance tailoring were positively received; trainees reported increased interest in research praxis and initiated an A.S. research capacity-strengthening model. Social work assured knowledge parity in development/delivery of the training curriculum and culturally safe discussions on social determinants of health, territorial status and Samoan survivance. Findings are context-specific yet offer considerations for capacity-strengthening partnerships seeking to advance health equity.

Given chronic experiences of historical oppression, Indigenous peoples tend to experience much higher rates of depression than the general US population, which then, drives disproportionately high rates of suicide and other health disparities. The purpose of this research was to examine the core components of the culturally grounded Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence as they relate to depressive symptoms experienced by Indigenous peoples. As part of a larger convergent mixed-methods study, in this quantitative survey component, we utilised data from a sample of 127 Indigenous adults across two Southeastern US tribes. Regression analysis results signified support for the framework, indicating that historical oppression and proximal stress (daily stressors and lower incomes) were risk factors, whereas family resilience and life satisfaction (a measure of transcendence) were protective factors related to depressive symptoms. The results provide a foundation for future research to build upon in identifying culturally relevant risk and protective factors to ameliorate depression and other health disparities.

Despite calls for greater social work attention to the centrality of place in human life, the profession has yet to hone frameworks that fully capture the role of place in individual-collective identity and well-being. To move this agenda forward, this article draws on data from a series of focus groups to explore the placed experiences of women in Palestine. Analytically, it is informed by , which emphasises the deeply interactional relationships between people and places, views place-centred practice and research as catalysts for active responses to the spatialised nature of power and injustice, and focuses centrally on the geographic and spatial dynamics of colonisation, and particularly settler colonialism, as key determinants of individual and collective well-being. Women's spatial narratives revolved around individual-collective identity and sovereignty, focusing in particular on three interdependent factors: freedom of movement; possession and dispossession; and continuity of place. Findings also illuminated spatial practices of resistance by which women defend and promote identity and sovereignty. We conclude with recommendations for more explicit, critically informed attention to place in social work practice, education and research.

This study investigates the mechanisms by which biculturalism impacts various health outcomes amongst youth migrants to Hawai'i who are from the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands jurisdictions. Using purposive sampling, 284 males and females (twelve to nineteen years old) of Pacific Islander ethnicities in Hawai'i completed a survey. Results from path analysis showed that biculturalism significantly and positively affected self-esteem that, in turn, improved eating attitude, body satisfaction and perceived well-being. Further, eating attitude increased healthy eating behaviour and body satisfaction that, in turn, positively affected general health perception and body satisfaction. Positive smoking attitudes increased smoking activities, which negatively affect general health perception. The study demonstrated that self-esteem impacted overall health through its influence on enhancing positive perceptions about the importance of healthy eating, body satisfaction and well-being. Biculturalism indirectly led to increased self-esteem, which in turn directly influenced attitudes about healthy eating, body satisfaction and perceived well-being. Our study provides strong evidence that addressing the problem of health disparities for minority populations in the USA has to start with reaffirming the value of diversity and multiculturalism and embracing an individual's historic cultural identity. Specific implications for funding agencies and researchers of minority health programs are discussed.

Indigenous peoples in Canada often experience a greater burden of poor health and wellness relative to non-Indigenous Canadians due to a legacy of colonisation and racism. However, Indigenous mental wellness outcomes vary by community, and it is essential to understand how a community has been impacted by the determinants to improve mental wellness outcomes. This article shares insight from a research partnership with the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society, an urban Indigenous community service organisation. The study used a decolonising, qualitative methodology in which urban Indigenous Elders shared their knowledge of mental wellness and experiences of services and supports. Elders described mental wellness holistically, connected to their relationships, land, language and culture. They described several determinants of wellness including identity, poverty, transportation, abuse and trauma. Elders shared experiences of culturally unsafe care and identified colonisation as root causes of poor mental wellness. They shared how some determinants affect urban Indigenous communities uniquely. This included limited transportation to cultural activities outside urban centres, such as medicine picking, the importance of urban organisations (such as Aboriginal Friendship Centres) in developing social support networks, and the role of discrimination, racism and inequitable care as barriers to accessing services in urban centres.