Social work can all too often become synonymous with the pressures of child and public protection. Yet at is heart, it is a profession that promotes human rights and challenges social injustices, through understandings of marginalisation and oppression. Social work is a global profession, where individual social workers actively engage with a diversity of experiences and situations, seeking to work with people to empower them to take control of and improve their lives. In this final issue of the year, which is slightly smaller, following the previous bumper special edition, we bring together three qualitative papers that capture this abundance, and encourage us to hear voices from those that are often at the margins of social work.