Empowerment based social work practices: Experiences of social workers in healthcare settings

Abstract

This study explores how healthcare social workers make sense of empowerment-based practice and how they enact it in everyday interventions. Specifically, it examines how social workers interpret power, powerlessness, and empowerment; how they perceive their own professional power and vulnerability; and how they translate the empowerment approach into practice within complex institutional and relational contexts. The study adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach and draws on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-two social workers (fourteen women and eight men) across five clinical fields in nine cities in Türkiye. Data were analysed through iterative coding and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three themes were identified: (i) meanings of power, powerlessness, and empowerment; (ii) professional power and powerlessness; and (iii) empowering professional practices. Empowerment was conceptualized as a dynamic, relational, and contextually situated process, negotiated through trust-building, awareness-raising, ethical positioning, and resource mediation, while simultaneously constrained by institutional conditions and interprofessional hierarchies. The study highlights the need to strengthen anti-oppressive approaches, enhance professional recognition, and develop organizational conditions that support empowerment-oriented practice within complex healthcare systems.