Demand-Oriented Social Work Practice Logic

The advancement and development of social work in China rely heavily on government policy support and resource investment. Currently, social work services are primarily promoted through government-purchased services, which essentially cater to the needs of grassroots government innovation in social governance. This has gradually led to a top-down, one-way supply of social work services, where residents passively receive services. This model often overlooks the actual needs of service recipients, resulting in issues such as repeated services for the same recipients, a focus on process rather than outcomes, superficial intervention, and ineffective services, thus wasting resources and diminishing the professionalism of social work. Technological innovations, such as the internet and artificial intelligence, have deeply integrated into people's behavioral patterns, leading to increasingly diverse, personalized, and complex demands from residents. These heightened demands place greater pressure on social work services while the accumulation of substantial livelihood data provides an opportunity for the development of social work. Based on recent practical explorations and abundant case studies concerning livelihood data, this paper explores the use of such data to transform service logic, with residents' needs as the starting point for all services. It proposes a demand-oriented approach at each stage of social work services, including demand perception, identification, provision, and evaluation, to establish a demand-oriented social work practice logic.