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Social Workers Putting into Practice the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

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Abstract

For social work with adults with mild intellectual disabilities, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides a framework for putting the principles of social justice and human rights into practice. This article focuses on social workers’ knowledge, values, and skills, which may contribute to the protection of the rights of adults with mild intellectual disabilities. A scoping review found no documented effective competencies for realizing human rights and social inclusion for adults with mild intellectual disabilities. As a result, a narrative review was conducted focusing on codes of ethics and competency profiles in the USA, UK, and Netherlands. The codes of ethics were found to align with the values of social justice, human dignity, integrity, competence/expertise, and relationship building. Differences between the codes of ethics and competency profiles were found in the human rights underpinning and weight given to advocacy, racism, dimensions of justice, and intersectionality. Six clusters of competencies were identified as aligning with CRPD aspirations: assessment, engagement, advancement, empowerment, intervention, and professionalism. We conclude that with regard to skills and knowledge, social work is profiled as a human rights profession in the USA and UK more explicitly than in NL. Regardless of the codes of ethics and competency profiles, convincing evidence that performing the competencies contributes to human rights realization is lacking. Further investigation of social work knowledge and skills that may be effective in the protection and promotion of human rights is recommended.

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The research is funded by a PhD scholarship offered by Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Centre for Social Innovation, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jeroen Knevel & Jean Pierre Wilken

  2. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jeroen Knevel

  3. Tartu University, Tartu, Estonia

    Jean Pierre Wilken

  4. Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Jean Pierre Wilken

  5. University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Alice Schippers

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  1. Jeroen Knevel
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Knevel, J., Wilken, J.P. & Schippers, A. Social Workers Putting into Practice the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. J. Hum. Rights Soc. Work 8, 302–315 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-023-00255-2

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