Social Entrepreneurship and Social Work Practice: A Strategic Framework for Sustainable Community-Based Responses to Poverty and Family Vulnerability

Persistent poverty and family vulnerability expose the limits of social work responses that rely mainly on crisis intervention, short funding cycles, and fragmented services. This article examines how social entrepreneurship can complement social work practice in developing sustainable, community-based responses. An integrative review brought together conceptual, empirical, and review literature from social work, social entrepreneurship, social innovation, community development, and sustainable livelihoods. A structured audit of the final corpus retained 63 sources, which were analysed thematically. Five themes were identified: the limitations of welfare-dependent and crisis-oriented interventions; social entrepreneurship as a sustainability strategy; community ownership and sustainable livelihoods; ethical risks associated with marketisation, mission drift, exclusion and state withdrawal; and the importance of partnership and accountable governance. The article proposes a six-component Social Work-Informed Social Entrepreneurship Framework comprising participatory asset assessment, ethical screening, livelihoods design, ecosystem building, governance, and social impact measurement. It also outlines a staged implementation pathway and safeguards for practice. The review concludes that social entrepreneurship is most defensible when it is community-owned, ethically governed, and connected to public social protection. It should extend developmental opportunities without making assistance conditional on market participation or displacing state and professional responsibilities.