Tapiwa Julius 

As Principal Social Workers (PSWs), we occupy a unique space in our systems rooted in practice, accountable for standards, and entrusted with professional leadership. This year’s World Social Work Day theme, speaks directly to our role and responsibility.

Harambee reminds us that professional leadership is collective, not individual. No PSW leads alone. Our impact comes from strengthening the whole profession amplifying practitioner voice, nurturing ethical cultures, and creating conditions where social work values can thrive across organisations.

This means holding the line on social work values when systems are under pressure. In moments of constraint, reform, and scrutiny, Harambee calls PSWs to be visible moral leaders ensuring that children, adults, and families remain at the centre of decision-making, not lost in performance narratives.

Harambee requires courageous conversations across power and difference. As PSWs, we are often the bridge between practitioners and senior leaders, between policy and practice, between lived experience and organisational systems. Pulling together means naming inequity, challenging discrimination, oppression, racism, and acting with integrity, even when it is uncomfortable.

Collective care is a leadership responsibility. Workforce wellbeing, reflective supervision, and psychologically safe cultures are foundational. Harambee asks PSWs to lead with compassion and love, recognising that sustainable practice depends on how we treat one another.

On World Social Work Day, we reaffirm Harambee as a professional commitment to lead together, learn together, and stand together so that social work remains ethical, relational, and transformative in every system we serve. 

Louise Spragg 

World Social Work Day offers a moment to pause, reflect and reconnect with the shared meaning of our profession. 

When I consider this theme, I believe the role of social workers or alternatively qualified practitioners is to facilitate hope. A hope for a better, brighter future. Really considering what is in our gift to aid the meaning of hope for families and their individual circumstances, acknowledging that often our families’ current circumstances are not their final destination we all grow and heal in different ways at different times. Thinking about how we co-create and build hope, hope that change and growth are possible, honouring people’s strengths seeking them to recognise and build a better future. 

It is also important to consider collective hope; how can we work alongside families and form solutions to create a system which is more responsive, less shame inducing and promotes love and care?

As professionals in social care, we need to consider what we can do to be the difference. The way we hold conversations, and offer support that is rooted in care, compassion, positive regard, where we need to use authority. This is purposeful and guiding. 

Strength is in community. We need to come together, human to human to forge relationships at their foundation, with a sense of belonging and collective co-produced commitment. We are practicing in a world where divisions are amplified and the impact that these have are lifelong. 

Our current context requires a deliberate collective action and Harambee captures this beautifully as a way of being - a shared purpose. How we foster these values in our day-to-day acts, how we relate and how we connect. How we continue to be allies, to actively challenge racism, inequity, oppression, and build systems that values everyone, even if this is clumsy - this brings about change. It’s important that we use the privilege we have with purpose and influence, to amplify voices, create space, remove barriers and support equity in every interaction. 

Let’s reflect on this today - we are the change we facilitate. As PSWs, we must consider what we can do more of in the future. To make a difference, we need to bring together the voices of lived and learnt experience, recognise our interconnectedness, model the change we need to see, and lead from the heart.  

Lisa Cummings 

As PSW for Sefton Council, I have been reflecting on the meaning of the Harambee call - the Kenyan proverb ‘sticks in a bundle are unbreakable’ reminds me that our strength often lies in our connections. The support of family, friends, colleagues, and partner agencies has shaped and supported my practice for nearly 30 years; together with learning from children and families. 

I am also taken back to the tragic events in Southport on 29 July 2024 and want to honour the lives of Alice, Bebe, and Elsie. Their families and all of those children and adults injured or who suffered a lifelong psychological impact. We remember the vital response of emergency services, and the compassion shown by the community which embodied the true spirit of Harambee— people 'pulling together’ with courage, kindness, and shared purpose.

As we celebrate World Social Work Day, it is important to acknowledge that meaningful change is never the work of one profession alone. It is created by social workers, and countless other dedicated professionals, the strength of children and families and the generosity of our communities. This is what working together truly looks like – rarely individual actions but through an ‘all for one’ collective approach and commitment. This is also how we reduce risk, create safety; foster inclusion, hope and harmony.

As we move forward with Family First reforms, mutual respect and support becomes even more important. By listening carefully to each other and staying united in our goals, we hope to turn reform into lasting system change with better outcomes for children and families. The hope is families will become more empowered, communities more connected, and that every child will have the opportunity to learn and thrive.  

Sancha Thomas 

Every year, World Social Work Day offers a moment to pause. Something that doesn’t always come naturally in our fast paced world of practice. It invites us to step back from the immediate pressures of assessments, visits, panels, and improvement plans, and reconnect with why we choose this work.paced world of practice. It invites us to step back from the immediate pressures of assessments, visits, panels, and improvement plans, and reconnect with why we choose this work.

For me, as PSW in Luton, this day is more than a celebration. It is an annual reminder of our collective purpose and an opportunity to reflect on our practice within the wider context of both local and national social care reform.

This year’s global theme speaks directly to the essence of social work and captures our commitment to pull together, fostering connection, and strengthening the practice that help children, families, and communities to thrive. This message resonates profoundly as we continue to place relationships, compassion, and collaboration at the heart of practice in Luton.

Today isn’t just about celebrating the profession. It’s also about recognising the systems within which we practice and advocating for a social care landscape that truly supports children, families, and practitioners. It reminds us that meaningful change happens when we unite our local aspirations with the national reform agenda, keeping hope and harmony at the centre of everything we do. 

Leanne Morgan 

When the theme for World Social Work Day 2026 was announced, I admit that at first, I struggled. I do feel that I must resist getting drawn in and encompassed by the images of divisiveness, inequity and oppression that we are seeing currently. The world feels to me more divided than ever and perhaps edging towards a darkness that I do find unsettling.

I asked myself what can I do about this; one person, one social worker? How can I answer the Harambee call? In reflecting on that question, I was reminded of this passage:

Imagine a thriving garden filled with many flowers and plants, a tranquil place of aroma and colour where everything blossoms and flourishes. Envisage what conditions this oasis would require, what it would take to nurture the plants, to develop their fullest potential. And then imagine that, instead of plants, the garden is filled with children, all different, all unique all rich in potential. What conditions would they need to grow and develop?

Eichsteller and Holtoff cited in Cameron and Moss (2011) 

This question transformed my early student practice in a small South Wales local authority, and it still anchors my practice today. The language of that passage is beautiful, but its challenge is what continues to resonate: children do not thrive because of a single professional’s effort. They flourish when the ecosystem around them works in harmony.

When we truly examine the ‘conditions’ children need, we see clearly that social work cannot stand alone. We cannot safeguard, support, or transform family life without trust, shared values, shared accountability, and humility. Green fingers are not enough; nor is professional expertise in isolation. We cannot work alone to affect change but as individual practitioners we can and do bring children, families, professionals and communities together. The shared endeavour impactful. 

A shift is happening. We are listening more closely to children and young people. We are inviting wider families into decision-making spaces. We are strengthening collaboration with multiagency partners. And now, with the Families First reforms placing co-production at the centre, we are being asked to go further. In this, we are answering the Harambee call. making spaces. We are strengthening collaboration with multiagency partners. And now, with the Families First reforms production at the centre, we are being asked to go further. In this, we are answering the harambee call. 

Yes, it will be complex. But complexity has never deterred us — it has defined us. These reforms offer the closest opportunity we have had to achieve genuine, systemwide coproduction. The pressure will be real, and the timeframe tight, but we must resist the temptation to settle for tokenistic engagement. True coproduction takes time, resources, and courage. It asks us to create spaces where every voice — especially those loving, caring for, and protecting a child — is valued equally. For me, this is seminal. At last, we have a reform that recognises the equal worth of the perspectives surrounding a child. If we approach this change with care, patience, and passion, we can build something powerful: a shared hope that connects everyone who steps into the social care space.

And if we succeed, our collective ‘community gardening’ will not be just metaphorical.