Forum Records | Who Will Guarantee Social Workers? Discussing Legal Responsibilities and Professional Boundaries of Social Workers within the Social Safety Net

On April 9, 2026, the Alliance for Social Welfare Organizations, Taiwan Association of Social Work Education, Judicial Reform Foundation, and Taipei Social Workers Union jointly held the forum titled "Who Will Guarantee Social Workers? Discussing Legal Responsibilities and Professional Boundaries of Social Workers within the Social Safety Net." Below is a summary of the forum proceedings (not a verbatim transcript).

Special Lecture I: Discussion on Social Work Systems and Legal Responsibilities

Wang Huang-yu ｜ Distinguished Professor and Dean, College of Law, National Taiwan University

(1) Legislative Purpose and Professional Characteristics of the Social Workers Act

Professor Wang pointed out that social workers have a mission to "practice social justice," which is an extremely rare professional norm. She also paid special attention to the scope of practice under Article 12 of the Social Workers Act, noting from the phrasing that the social work profession emphasizes that "people need systematic support," including protection, prevention, and support services. Terms such as "assist," "serve," and "support" demonstrate non-coercive, relationship-oriented professional characteristics.

(2) Differences in Working Models between Social Work and Law

The core of social work lies in helping service users establish subjectivity so they can autonomously make life decisions, rather than replacing them. There is no control relationship between social workers and service users; the essence is assistance, communication, and providing support, and the other party may choose not to cooperate. In contrast, the law is backed by state coercion, demanding obedience through norms. Both share the same goal, but the methods differ.

Professor Wang pointed out that the current system is often swayed by public opinion, prompting reflections on whether interventions were made too early after an incident occurs. However, in practice, sometimes it is indeed too late, while other times intervening more only makes the other party more evasive. Simply increasing the frequency of home visits, or even hearing demands that future visits involve strip-searching young children, is not necessarily reasonable and may even harm dignity. "Legal professionals find such demands—especially the creation of duties not provided for by law—baffling." Citing the "Little Qiu Human Ball Case," she noted that when public opinion is not yet rational, it may influence prosecutors' judgments. Prosecution reasons such as demanding the evacuation of an intensive care unit or equipment modification were later evaluated by experts as unreasonable. The law views coercive intervention as a last resort, and excessive intervention does not necessarily yield better results.

(3) Professional Practice Dilemmas for Social Workers

Social workers rely heavily on cross-system collaboration, and the information they obtain is mostly one-sided. In practice, they often grapple between "trust" and "suspicion": excessive trust may lead to misjudgment or failure to report; excessive intervention may damage relationships and lead to service discontinuation. The professor added as an example that the mandatory reporting system for pregnancies of those under 16 once raised concerns in the obstetrics and gynecology community: once reported, the parties involved might no longer seek medical treatment, thereby increasing risks. "Once it comes into contact with law, the originally benevolent professional relationship may be altered." She also pointed out that the pressure of "doing it out of fear of trouble" is not unique to social workers; physicians face it as well.

(4) Cooperative Relationships between Social Workers and Other Systems

As seen from the scope of work, social work involves a large amount of "referral" and cross-system collaboration. Therefore, the relationship between social workers and other professions should be built on trust rather than supervision. There is no vertical command relationship between social workers and other professionals; the power to demand others to act according to their instructions does not exist, and it is instead a parallel collaboration.

(5) The Principle of Trust under the Criminal Code

Professor Wang illustrated this using the division of labor in medicine: surgeons and anesthesiologists are parallel professions, each responsible for their own domain and able to trust one another. This is the principle of trust under the Criminal Code. In the case of a vertical division of labor (such as a physician directing nursing staff), the supervisor bears supervisory responsibility and cannot claim exemption under the principle of trust. The collaboration between social workers and other systems is a horizontal division of labor, and thus they can reasonably trust other professions.

(6) Legal Reflections on Child Abuse Cases

The attribution of responsibility should return to the correspondence between power and responsibility: without power, there should be no responsibility. The duty of social workers lies in referral. If they have referred a case to a qualified person according to the system—such as a licensed babysitter—they can reasonably trust their professionalism. If the babysitter commits intentional harm, the babysitter should be held responsible. The nature of a social worker's home visit is care and observation rather than supervision, and the information obtained is limited; increasing the frequency of home visits does not necessarily yield a better grasp of the true situation. "Can multiple visits yield information multiple times? Not necessarily; this is like a cat-and-mouse game. Increasing visits excessively does not necessarily mean getting more information."

Furthermore, criminal liability must be based on "foreseeability." If abnormalities are detected but unaddressed, liability may be established; however, if they cannot be detected under average professional capabilities, retrospective blame should not be imposed. Legal judgments should return to the time of the act rather than expanding responsibility influenced by hindsight public opinion. Even if society places high importance on child protection, excessive assignment of blame does not necessarily help solve problems.

Finally, Professor Wang mentioned: "Actually, I also wrote a book on the position of guarantor... When people ask me whether social workers have the position of guarantor, my mind reviews it and I say no, and I can also show you my book."

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Special Lecture II: Dialectics on Social Workers and the Position of Guarantor under the Criminal Code

Lu Ying-chieh ｜ Professor, Department of Law, National Chung Cheng University; Board Member, Judicial Reform Foundation

(1) Comparative Law: German Cases

1. OLG Hamm (2020) Case on the Guarantor Position of Youth Welfare Office Social Workers: In this case, Youth Welfare Office social workers knew that two young children of a single mother were in danger of being neglected but failed to take any action, ultimately leading to the starvation death of a boy. Both the district court and the higher regional court held that the social worker bore the "guarantor obligation" to ensure the boy did not die. The higher regional court specifically pointed out that the social worker failed to conduct a risk assessment for months and did not petition the family court for intervention to seek assistance when the mother refused to cooperate, and their "omission" led to the result of death.
   
2. OLG Oldenburg (1996) Case on the Protection Obligation of Social-Educational Family Assistance: This case involved an infant death caused by biological parents neglecting care. The court explicitly stated that Youth Welfare Office social workers do not terminate their criminal law guarantor position merely by delegating family assistance work to private entities, because the state's protection obligation is not entirely replaced thereby. According to the German Social Code VIII (KJHG), families in need have a legal claim against the state, and public officials guaranteeing the subject matter bear the guarantor and protection obligations to prevent physical and mental harm to the children under their care within the scope of their social work.
   
3. Research Project of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Prof. Peter Bringewat): Whether social workers in private organizations possess the position of guarantor depends on the nature of their services. When social workers provide social-educational family assistance, their purpose is to protect children from harm, thus belonging to a "protective guarantor" rather than a mere "monitoring guarantor." When social workers "take office" to intervene in family life and parenting contexts, they have already entered a state of "actually undertaking protection" for the child, thereby generating the position of guarantor. Construction of German Social Law and Guarantor Position: According to Article 1, Book VIII of the German Social Code, the care and education of children are the primary obligations of parents, but the state community bears the responsibility of supervision and protection. When parents cannot ensure the welfare of children, they may request educational assistance from the state (i.e., a public law claim).
   
4. Summary: To possess the position of guarantor, a social worker must exercise public authority intervention based on the state's protection obligation, co-parent/co-care along with parental rights holders, factually "undertake actual protection" for children and youths, and provide "intensive care and companionship."
   

(2) Current Situation in Taiwan (The Kai-Kai Case)

1. Are there relevant legal sources?
   • Policy Level: Policy reports from the Executive Yuan's Children and Youth Promotion Task Force once mentioned the United Nations Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, suggesting that temporary care should be reviewed at least once every 3 months. However, this is merely a policy, and the current manpower in the placement system is insufficient to implement it.
   • Administrative Rulings: Although the competent authority's entrusted placement operation procedures stipulate regular evaluations every 3 months, short-term placement cases for "adoption matching services" are explicitly excluded from the application scope of these operation procedures.
   • Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act: Article 60 stipulates that institutions and foster families entrusted with placement during the placement period bear the same duty of care toward children as parental rights holders. Articles 53 and 56 stipulate that when social workers know children are abused or improperly raised in the course of their duties, they shall report within 24 hours.
     
2. Critique of the Indictment:
   • When prosecuting the involved social worker, the prosecutor cited Article 276 (negligent homicide) and Articles 214 and 216 (forgery of documents) of the Criminal Code. The indictment did not cite Article 15 of the Criminal Code (omission offenses by guarantors) nor did it discuss whether the social worker possessed the "position of guarantor," which means the court might also avoid this issue, preventing judicial practice from forming a clear view through this. (Note: According to court observation records, the prosecutor's closing argument in court has added discussions on the social worker's position of guarantor.)
   • The prosecutor's reasons for determining that the social worker was negligent mainly lay in the primary social worker's failure to fulfill the duty of continuous tracking, failure to report according to law, failure to increase home visit frequencies according to institutional manuals, and failure to contact previous caregivers to gather information.
     

(3) Summary:

1. Under our country's regulations, home visit social workers for short-term adoption placements are not joint parental responsibility bearers, nor can they intervene in family life to become "actual protection bearers" providing intensive care and companionship. A social worker's authority is limited to "reporting"; the one who truly bears the child protection obligation should be the competent authority.
2. To impose the criminal law position of guarantor on social workers, we must emulate German social law by clearly authorizing state protection obligations to social workers through legislation (exercising public authority) and endowing social workers with sufficient "authority and capacity" to conduct intensive care and companionship. Without corresponding authority and capacity, criminal liability should not be imposed.
3. The position of guarantor for omission offenses under criminal law cannot be arbitrarily constructed based on vague legal provisions. German social workers experience extremely high care density and thus bear corresponding responsibilities; conversely, in Taiwan, social workers often face a high-pressure environment of carrying 200 cases per person. Under such care density, whether public sector or private social workers can be required to bear guarantor obligations must be viewed cautiously under criminal law.
   

Attachments

• Outlines of presentation and interlocutor slides are open for download until April 12 (Sun) 22:00. Please comply with copyright regulations, and be sure to cite the source if quoting or sharing.
• Post-forum Press Release