Military Social Work: Roles, Practice Domains, and Ethical Challenges in Serving Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families

Social workers are among the largest groups of mental health and human service professionals serving military personnel, veterans, and their families. Their work spans uniformed and civilian roles, from combat and operational stress control in deployed settings to family advocacy on military installations and case management in veterans’ services. This integrative review synthesizes the literature on military social work to describe its historical development, its theoretical foundations, its principal practice domains, and the ethical and professional challenges it presents. Drawing on the person-in-environment perspective and family stress theory, the review identifies five core practice domains: mental health and combat stress, family and child welfare, the deployment cycle, transition and reintegration, and advocacy for vulnerable subgroups such as veterans experiencing homelessness and survivors of military sexual trauma. Evidence shows that military-connected populations face distinctive stressors, including repeated separations, relocation, combat exposure, and stigma toward help-seeking, and that social workers are well placed to address these stressors across individual, family, unit, and community levels. However, practitioners also face mixed-agency dilemmas, in which obligations to the client and to the military organization can conflict, together with risks of secondary traumatic stress. We conclude that military social work requires specialized cultural competence, ecologically oriented practice, clear ethical frameworks, and stronger evaluation of interventions, and we outline priorities for education, practice, and research.