The previous chapters, in exploring various aspects of human rights and the implications of seeing social work as a human rights profession, have touched on many important practice issues in relation to social work. The issues are not new. Ethics, social control, the place of policy and advocacy, professionalism, the role of expertise, linking the personal and the political, cultural relativism, need definition, empowerment and so on are all familiar and are frequently contested within social work. In the preceding chapters, however, they have arisen not out of a consideration of social work per se but rather out of a discussion of human rights and the possible implications of a human rights approach to practice. Various social work practice principles emerged from these discussions, and the purpose of this chapter is to bring these together in order to derive an overall picture of human rights-based social work. This will be done around three organising themes: theoretical foundations, empowerment and contextual/universal issues.

The previous chapter dealt with ways to realise and protect human rights through social work practice. This chapter, by contrast, focuses on social work practice itself – it is the processes, rather than the outcomes, of social work practice that are of concern here. If social work is a human rights profession and aims to meet human rights through its practice, it is essential that the profession itself operate in such a way that its own practices observe human rights principles and do not violate the human rights of others. The important principle throughout this chapter is that we respect other people’s human rights by allowing them maximum self-determination and control over the situation in which they find themselves. This principle can be applied to the practice of social work. While social workers have always been committed to the principle of client self-determination, this has often applied to the life of the client rather than to the practice of social work itself and to the way social work practice is constructed by social workers.

There are two views one can take on the timeliness of the idea of human rights. One is that it is an idea whose time has come. This view sees human rights as being a necessary counter to economic globalisation and asserts that, in the globalised world, ideas of global citizenship based on ideals of human rights are important in the same way as ideas of national citizenship rights became important with the emergence of the nation state. It suggests that the apparently increasing interest in a human rights discourse is a source of hope for a future based on collective understandings of shared human values rather than individual greed and consumption. Human rights can be the basis for a future of humanity that until now has seemed an impossible dream. The other view of human rights is that it is an idea whose time has passed. This view sees human rights as a leftover remnant from the disappearing world of modernist certainty and Western imperialism. In the postmodern world of relativism, multiple voices, fragmented realities and the ‘death of the meta-narrative’, there is no room for, and no point in, a universal discourse such as human rights.

Undergraduate research education is increasingly important for social work practitioners given the demands for evidence-based practice in social service delivery. Increasingly research competency or new knowledge integration into practice has been identified as a professional responsibility. However, social workers eill often not use or engage in research in their practice settings, tasking social work educators to address this gap through developing innovative undergraduate curricula through which student learners can be engaged. This chapter examines the literature in this area and identifies several proposed engagement strategies such as incorporating research tasks directly into coursework, creating research assistant positions or internships, developing partnerships with community-based agencies to provide applied research opportunities or through case study scenarios and guest speakers, and using ‘real’ research datasets for qualitative/quantitative training. Building mentorship opportunities through research teams including undergraduate and graduate students to facilitate both teaching and learning opportunities in research may also be of benefit.