Social work and the understanding of help: Learning from narratives of residents of Japan’s national Hansen’s disease sanatoriums

Attentive listening to narratives can shift social work from mere knowledge transmission towards mutuality. This article reports on an educational practice that enabled a move from ‘learning about’ to ‘learning from’ the perspectives of people directly affected, through encounters between social work students and residents of Hansen’s disease sanatoriums in Japan. Using a three-stage framework – preparation, encounter and post-visit reflection – we show how students recognised internalised shame produced by a long history of segregation. Their reflections suggest that help is not giving and receiving, but a relationship grounded in mutuality and co-constructed meaning, transferable across stigma-affected settings.