Human Rights and Social Work Towards Rights-Based Practice

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.