Futures Thinking in Social Work: Responding to Change and Shaping What Comes Next

Social work is already a future(s)-oriented profession, even if we do not always describe it that way.

When we work with a client to identify goals, develop a program intended to improve community outcomes, advocate for a policy change, or educate students for careers that may span several decades, we are making assumptions about what comes next. We are imagining that conditions can change and that our actions in the present can influence future outcomes.

Yet as a profession, we spend relatively little time examining those assumptions directly.

That is one reason why futures thinking in social work is critically needed! Futures thinking creates space to look beyond the immediate demands of practice and ask a different set of questions about change, uncertainty, and possibility.

It does not tell us what the future will be. It helps us become more thoughtful about the futures we may encounter and more intentional about the futures we help create.

Social Work Is Often Asked to Respond After Change Has Already Happened

Social workers are exceptionally good at responding to complexity. We work in systems where needs are urgent, resources are limited, and circumstances can change quickly.

There is also a downside to constantly operating in response mode.

By the time a new challenge becomes obvious, many of the conditions that created it may already be well established. Organizations are then forced to adapt quickly. Educational programs add new content to curricula. Professional associations issue guidance. Practitioners figure out how to respond while continuing to serve clients and communities.

We can see this happening with artificial intelligence right now.

Only a few years ago, generative AI was largely outside mainstream conversations in social work. Today, students are using it, practitioners are experimenting with it, organizations are considering it, and educators are trying to determine what responsible use should look like. I have many signals across several platforms identifying these forces that are shaping our future(s) right now.

The profession is responding, as it should. But imagine if our conversations had begun earlier.

What questions might we have asked before these technologies were widely available? What ethical issues might we have anticipated? What skills would we have wanted students to develop? What kinds of policies or safeguards might we have considered?

This is where futures thinking and strategic foresight becomes useful.

It gives us permission to engage with change before we are certain where it is going.

Futures Thinking Is Not Prediction

People sometimes hear the word future and assume that futures thinking is about predicting the future. The problem, as Dr. Emmett Brown so eloquently stated in Back to the Future III, is that

“(Y)our future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. (Y)our future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one! ”

— Dr. Emmett Brown

When we try to predict the future it narrows our attention toward a particular outcome. Futures thinking and strategic foresight widens it.

Instead of asking, “What is the future of social work?” we can ask:

• What different futures might social work face?

• What changes are beginning to emerge around us?

• Which assumptions about practice, education, policy, or organizations may no longer hold?

• What possibilities are we overlooking because they do not fit our current expectations?

• And perhaps most importantly, What kinds of futures do we actually want?

These questions shift the conversation away from certainty and toward possibility. That distinction matters because uncertainty is not a temporary condition that social workers will eventually overcome. It is part of the environment in which we practice.

Futures thinking gives us a way to engage that uncertainty rather than simply wait for it to resolve.

The Problem With Assuming Tomorrow Will Look Like Today

One of the easiest mistakes to make when thinking about the future is to extend the present forward.

We assume existing institutions will continue to operate in roughly the same way. We imagine that professional roles will remain stable. We expect education, healthcare, government, and human services to continue functioning according to familiar models. However, those assumptions are no longer reasonable! The future rarely arrives as a completely unfamiliar world. More often, it emerges through a combination of continuity and disruption. Some parts of our systems remain recognizable while others change dramatically.

For social work, this could involve shifts in how services are delivered, how organizations are funded, how people access information, how professional expertise is understood, or how communities organize around social issues. Technology is certainly part of that story, but it is not the whole story. Climate change, demographic change, political instability, economic inequality, changing expectations of higher education, and declining trust in institutions may all shape the environments in which future social workers practice.

The purpose of futures thinking is not to create an exhaustive list of trends. It is to develop a habit of looking beyond what is immediately visible.

Futures Thinking Changes the Questions We Ask

One of the things I appreciate most about futures & foresight work is that it changes the quality of the questions.

Consider a social work program thinking about artificial intelligence or AI.

A present-focused question might be:

How should students use generative AI in their assignments?

That is an important question, but it is also relatively narrow.

A futures-oriented conversation might ask:

• How could AI change the nature of professional expertise?

• What kinds of tasks might social workers no longer perform themselves?

• Which aspects of practice should remain fundamentally human?

• How might clients' expectations change as AI becomes more common in other parts of their lives?

• What happens if access to sophisticated technology becomes another source of inequality?

• What new forms of bias, surveillance, or exclusion could emerge?

• How should social work values influence the design and use of these systems?

Those questions do not have simple answers and that is precisely why they are worth asking.

Futures thinking is valuable not because it makes uncertainty disappear, but because it helps us become more comfortable working within it.

Whose Future Are We Talking About?

There is another reason I believe futures thinking belongs in social work. Questions about the future are also questions about power.

• Who gets to imagine the future?

• Who gets to make decisions about it?

• Whose experiences are represented?

• Who benefits from particular innovations, policies, or systems?

• Who bears the risk when they fail?

A technology company may imagine one future for human services. A government agency may imagine another. A university, healthcare system, nonprofit organization, social worker, and community member may each see different possibilities.

None of those perspectives is neutral.

For social work, this means futures thinking cannot simply be an exercise in identifying what is new or exciting. We have to ask what different futures mean for people who have historically been excluded from decisions about the systems that affect their lives. A future can be technologically sophisticated and still be unjust. It can be efficient and still be dehumanizing. It can be innovative and still reproduce longstanding inequities.

Social work has something important to contribute to future(s) conversations precisely because the profession brings questions of ethics, power, justice, human relationships, and community wellbeing into the discussion.

Futures Thinking as a Professional Capacity

I do not think the believe that every social worker needs to become a professional futurist! I do think social workers can benefit from developing a stronger capacity to anticipate change and think beyond immediate conditions. That may be as simple as creating regular opportunities within organizations or classrooms to ask key questions:

• What are we noticing that feels different?

• What are we assuming will remain the same?

• What developments outside social work could eventually affect our work?

• What would surprise us if it happened five years from now?

• What future are our current decisions helping create?

These questions can be incorporated into strategic planning, supervision, classroom discussions, program evaluation, community engagement, and policy analysis. The value is not necessarily in producing a perfect answer but in stretching our thinking beyond the constraints of the present.

Social Work Education Has a Particular Responsibility

I have am especially interested in what futures thinking means for social work education. In part because I am a social work Professor, but also because I care deeply about this profession. We are preparing students for a profession that will continue to change long after they leave our classrooms. That creates a challenge.

We have to teach what students need to know today while also preparing them to operate in environments we cannot fully describe. Content knowledge remains essential, but I am increasingly convinced that students also need practice navigating ambiguity, questioning assumptions, examining emerging change, and imagining alternatives. In a recent teaching note with colleagues, I explored how futures thinking and strategic foresight can be integrated into social work education rather than treated as something separate from the existing curriculum.

That work reinforced something I have come to believe more broadly: preparing students for the future is not primarily about teaching them to use a particular tool. It is about helping them become more adaptive thinkers. The technologies will change. The terminology will change. The social issues confronting the profession will change.

The ability to think critically about change will remain valuable, well into the future.

Taking the Long View

There is a tendency to think about the future as something far away. I no longer believe that is particularly helpful. The futures we eventually experience are already taking shape through decisions being made today.

Some changes are easy to see. Others begin as weak signals at the edges of our attention. Some will disappear. Others may fundamentally alter the systems in which social workers practice. We will not identify all of them correctly and that is not the standard by which futures thinking should be judged.

The more useful question is whether we are building a profession capable of looking ahead without losing sight of the people and values that define our work.

Can we become more curious about what is emerging?

Can we examine our assumptions before circumstances force us to?

Can we create space for communities to imagine their own futures?

Can we recognize both the promise and the potential harm of new technologies and social changes?

Can we move beyond asking what the future will bring and begin asking what role social work should play in shaping it?

For me, futures thinking and strategic foresight in social work is ultimately about developing that capacity. It is an invitation to take a longer view of our profession and the world around us. Not because we can predict what comes next.

But because what we do next still matters!