Our Department’s research objectives are as follows:
- To achieve research excellence in our leading research and expertise areas on children and youth, family (e.g., parent education and family intervention), and social policy (e.g., social security and poverty).
- To actively develop the niche areas on gerontology, medical social work, and rehabilitation.
- To address global challenges and local needs amidst rapid social, economic and political changes in a globalized context.
- To generate academic and societal impact for improving the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups (e.g. low-income individuals, families and youth in need, and ethnic minorities).
- To foster university-industry partnerships for knowledge transfer, service innovation, and policy change.
Our Department has dedicated its efforts to research and knowledge transfer. We have developed research expertise in a wide variety of areas including family and group work, poverty and social security, social administration and management, social policy and social welfare, youth work practice, bereavement, and medical social work practice, etc.
To promote our research focuses and encourage exchanges with other institutions, our Department has established two research centres that engage in various areas of research and activity.
The first is the Social Welfare Practice and Research Centre, established in 2000. It manages a number of research programmes and centres, namely, the Youth and Childhood Research Programme, Research Programme for Social Work Education, the Family and Group Practice Research Centre, and the Research Programme for Aging and Disabilities.
More recently we have established the CUHK-Nankai Joint Research Centre for Social Policy together with Nankai University, which helps us to broaden our horizons by engaging in exchanges with another institution while remaining within a Chinese context.
These research centres frequently disseminate their research findings through publications, training, and other forms of activities that are deemed appropriate.
Besides of the output of the research centres, our faculty members also engage in a broad range of research related to social problems, social policy issues, and social work intervention methods in different fields including children and youths, family, mental health, social work philosophy, and social welfare development in East Asia. The research projects of our faculty members have attracted the support of RGC Earmarked Grants, Internal Grants and External Grants.