ABSTRACT
This chapter concludes this book by reflecting on the perils and prospects of human rights for social work. It focuses forward to future directions for rights-based social work practice. The book, while intended to encourage debate and examination of rights-based approaches to social work, is not meant to be naively optimistic about their potential. As aspirational fields working to promote human well-being and social justice in an unjust world, human rights and social work face significant shortcomings. Human rights and social work both aspire to be universal in their relevance and application; however, both have been criticized for being culture-bound, products of social, political, and economic conditions. The book has explored how human rights can have a greater impact upon social work through rights-based approaches to social work practice. The incorporation of human rights in social work curricula, research, and practice, will position the profession to contribute to the realization of human rights and to the human rights movement.
