Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

A critical perspective on social services’ organizational boundaries: Learning from transgender women

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Summary: The normative construction of social services’ organizational boundaries may operationally exclude marginalized people by neglecting their specific needs and placing them outside the organization's domain. In order to develop a critical outline of social services’ organizational boundaries, we present a qualitative study involving 10 transgender women in Israel, aged 18–25, exploring their interactions with social services. Findings: The study present cases of organizational neglect and rejection, alongside cases of radical acceptance. These experiences of rejection and acceptance enable us to articulate social services’ organizational boundaries from a critical social work perspective, emphasizing customization, flexibility, and dialog. Applications: Building on the concept of radical acceptance, social workers and social services are encouraged to broaden their professional and organizational boundaries through a critical social work lens.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)577-595
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Social Work
Volume25
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

  • Social work
  • access to services
  • critical social work
  • qualitative research
  • social service
  • transgender issues

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A critical perspective on social services’ organizational boundaries: Learning from transgender women'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this