Practice: Social Work in Action

Sustainability in Social Work Practice

Scope

We invite abstracts on proposed papers for a themed special issue of the journal on Sustainability in Social Work Practice.

The relationship between sustainability and social work is complex and multifaceted. In recent years, the social work profession has been affected by a number of factors, including increasing demands placed upon practitioners due to more complex societal needs and issues (Murphy, 2023; Webb and Bywaters, 2018). These increasing demands are situated within a global context of the climate crisis and its unequal impacts, underpinned by, amongst other factors, poverty, displacement and colonisation, capitalism and greed (Fitzpatrick, Chapman and Harding, 2024; Jones et al, 2025).

It is more pressing than ever that as a profession and as a discipline, we examine sustainability in social work practice as it affects our relationships with people with lived experience, colleagues, educators and society more broadly.

This special issue contributes to a new way of thinking about sustainability and social work practice. It considers a broad conceptualisation of the term sustainability, drawing together different ideas of what sustainability can mean both for and within social work practice (Boetto, 2016).

Themes and topics

Some examples of relevant thematic areas include:

• Sustainability in the environmental sense of the word – including how social work practice impacts and is impacted by the climate crisis, and supporting people affected by climate change, including those experiencing disasters.
• Sustainable social work practice – developments in how practice is sustained in the broader cultural or temporal sense. This may include engagement with students, people with lived experience, colleagues, educators, practitioners, and policymakers.
• Social sustainability – thinking about work with specific communities and social justice-oriented practice, as well as community development.
• Organisational and/or personal sustainability – concerning staff wellbeing, resilience and retention, and strategies used by social work employers and organisations to support these things.
• Decolonisation and sustainability – giving recognition to global issues and international social work perspectives on sustainability, and foregrounding approaches and challenges to sustainability in, and from, the global south.

We would particularly encourage papers co-authored with students, people with lived experience of using services, and social work practitioners.

We would also invite social work practitioners to consider submitting abstract proposals for shorter Perspective Pieces (see below for details).