Digital Intervention, COVID-19, and Critical Realism: Toward a Science of Digital Social Work

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the pace of the digital transition process in which we have been immersed. In a context of generalized lock-down, our organizations have been forced to go digital and many of the activities social workers perform must now be done remotely. As a result, e-social work, or digital social work, has gone from being an emerging specialization to a critical specialty across organizations and activities. In this article, we examine some basic scientific and methodological foundations to develop a science of social work from the perspective of critical realism, with special attention to digitalization. Establishing the scientific foundations of digital social work is a preliminary step for its development as a field of specialization. © 2021, Western Michigan University. All rights reserved.