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In China, social work was reestablished in 1988. Despite the number of social work programmes increased very fast throughout the 1990s, there was a huge need for social work-trained educators. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Peking University launched the MSW (China) Programme in 2000 to create a critical mass of social work educators who would assume future leadership in social work development in mainland China. Participatory action research was employed as a methodology to explore how social work education could transform students into catalysts for social work education and social development. Purposive sampling was adopted, and seven cohorts totaling 238 graduates who graduated from the programme were the participants in this research. Data collection and analysis were carried out throughout the action research process. We found the triple capacity building model to be a good pedagogy to foster transformation among participants, and to steer the knowledge co-creation, practice innovation, policy reform, and social change through social work education. In this paper, we will provide an overview of the background, vision, and mission, as well as the teaching pedagogy of the programme and a case study to demonstrate how social work education has an impact on policy and practice innovation in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses aesthetic politics in the Chinese rural toilet revolution. Toilet retrofitting is conventionally regarded as an issue of sanitation improvement, but in the emerging trend of rural post‐productivism transformation, toilets have become contested sites of aesthetic governance in rural development. Using the case of a village in Northern China, the authors show that, in order to beautify the rural environment, toilet identification, selection, placement and demolition are all directed by aesthetic norms for a beautiful village. Additionally, the aestheticization of village development has legitimized state‐led development by creating a common‐sense understanding of and imagination for the future. However, aesthetic logics can represent a mismatch with the realities of local lives, resulting in place alienation and suspended development. This article unpacks the logics, mechanisms and spatial‐social processes of aesthetic governance in the Chinese toilet revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the government purchase of social services in China as a window by which to investigate the evolving relations between the party-state and social organizations. Going beyond the conventional focus on state–non-governmental organization (NGO) dynamics in urban areas, we explore the expanded role of social organizations in rural service provision under state-led campaigns of rural modernization. Engaging with institutional theory and the consultative authoritarianism thesis, we argue that NGOs initially operated in an emerging organizational field where they exercised considerable autonomy in setting agendas and designing services. As the party-state's incentives to utilize and co-opt the social work profession grow, however, we observe a trend towards incorporation, wherein social workers now play a bigger role alongside the strengthening of state control over the sector. Through tracing the inception and eventual termination of a decade-long social service project in Guangdong, this article shows how state incorporation might undermine the future role of NGOs in rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the grief of social workers who experience the death of clients in community mental health settings. "The ten participants represented three occupational categories: social work administrators, senior social workers team leaders and clinical leaders), and novice and frontline social workers." A phenomenological research approach was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the types of grief experienced by the participants. Researchers found that the grief of these "wounded helpers" took various forms: guilt, shock, panic, anger, shame, loss, sadness, helplessness, regret, fear, and anxiousness. In addition, some suffered from debilitating flashbacks. Their experiences produced psychological pain that took a long time to fade. Studies have shown that the grief and suffering of those in the helping professions are strongly connected to their perceived professional identity and their understanding of what constitutes professionalism. Based on our findings, we finally discuss the lessons that can be learned from this group of social workers who experienced recovery from traumatic situations in their career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a participatory action research project as a process for improving social work practice and empowering mothers with hemophiliac children. Four stages of the action research are presented in this study. The research played a critical consciousness-raising and capacity-building role facilitating the mothers' transformation from passive victims to active subjects. In addition, participatory action research contributed to identifying the emerging needs of families with hemophiliac children and improving the quality of social work services. We concluded that participatory action research is an effective way to empower disadvantaged people. This research methodology also facilitates social work practice in a non-traditional field. It is argued that participatory action research as a way of empowering the vulnerable also entails risks as attempts to redistribute power may earn further stigmatization and discrimination, especially from those whose existing power is challenged. Social work, as a profession committed to a more just and equal society, should be wary of this further stigmatization and insist on principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility, and respect for diversity. The article concludes by examining the limitations of employing participatory action research and makes recommendations for future programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ART helps articulate the heart of the ART ([1]). This choicepoint refers to the extent to which authors build on and create explicit links to previous work, and contribute to and extend a wider body of practice, knowledge, and theory. Reaching practitioners with new practices that lead to sustained transformation promotes scaling of our efforts as action researchers. [Extracted from the article]

The higher education system has marginalized the young educators. Young educators in the field of social work are in a much worse situation. Research indicates that young social work educators are facing three types of significant challenges: lacking teaching experience and social support; lacking academic research skills and facing great pressure from getting paper published; lacking professional knowledge and practical experience. This paper adopts action research to explore how to build a mutual self-help community among young social work educators who are experiencing similar challenges. Also, the process of the authors' experience of building a mutual-help community will be elaborated in detail: forming the initial idea of building a mutual-help group based on past experience, upgrading the occasional gatherings to a book club, facilitating mutual-help actions, facilitating collective actions, expanding a small team to a big community. Although the young social work educator mutual-help community has brought about some positive changes and helped mitigate distress temporarily, it doesn't solve the problem permanently. Building a mutual-help community for self-help is, in fact, our last-ditch move. So, we are looking forward to embracing a bright future when there will be a structural improvement in China's social work education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crises in food safety have attracted increased public attention in many countries, typically posing serious threats to public health and causing potential economic, social, and environmental damage. This research applied a green social work framework and developed a family-based and child-centered education model in a Chinese urban context. The green educational model engaged practitioners in a participatory and cooperative learning process to explore practical solutions for food safety that had social and environmental value. Applying action research, this program engaged participant families in extended ways of knowing in educational activities, through which to enhance their emotional connection with the natural environment, and develop critical knowing and reflective action. The program generated useful insights for green social work intervention and public education to improve environmental justice and providing lessons about action research as a method of engagement for social workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that China's population is aging, more rapidly than almost any country in recent history. In 2018, 1.67 billion or 11.9% of the population was aged 65 or older (China Daily, 2019). The effect of an aging population trend is not usually represented positively—"elderly as a burden"—whether in China or elsewhere. However, our action research project of post-disaster community rebuilding in Ya'an in Sichuan Province, China challenges this mainstream discourse of elderly people. In the process, we discovered the power of the elderly who did not passively accept external assistance following the earthquake, but actively participated in rebuilding their community. They were valuable human/cultural assets and able to make a great contribution to community development. This article provides an account of interdisciplinary action research in which social workers collaborated with elderly villagers to promote sustainable community development by integrating people's social, cultural, and economic skills into long-term reconstruction following a major disaster. Most importantly, it emphasizes the contribution of older people and challenges the dominant discourse relating to older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]