A call for a new perspective in social work and health care: the developmental-clinical social work perspective. COVID-19 pandemic through the human rights perspective

ABSTRACT Human rights are essential in shaping the pandemic response both for the public health emergency and the broader impact on people’s well-being. Utilizing the human rights lenses, this article expatiates on a developmental-clinical social work approach to the COVID-19 pandemic response. The disquisition explores human rights to health, education, adequate food and nutrition, water and sanitation, and development. It conducts projections and a cost–benefit analysis of remedial and developmental focus on health. The paper emphasizes that it is criminal to deprive human beings of their entitlements. The paper argues that socio-economic inequalities deprive people of their human rights. To this end, it calls for the equal distribution of wealth to end poverty and ultimately address human rights concerns. It advances for the integration of health in all policies. The article calls for the social work profession and other helping professions to rethink of their priorities in the enhancement of people’s welfare: either to be an agent of social control or an agent of social change. Social work should face the socio-economic inequalities head-on if it is to truly reflect its professional philosophy of social justice.