Areas of Social Work Practice I (Older Persons, Disability and Gender): Theories of Ageing, the Needs and Rights of Older Persons and the 2007 Act; Models of Disability, the Disability Movement and Milestones from Welfare to Rights, the RPwD Act 2016; and Gender and Development, Disparities, Gender-Based Violence and Safeguards

Internationally, the UN Principles for Older Persons (1991) set out five groups of principles: independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment and dignity. The first World Assembly on Ageing (Vienna, 1982) and the second (Madrid, 2002), which adopted the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, framed ageing as a development issue, and 2021 to 2030 is the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing; 1 October is the International Day of Older Persons. India adopted a National Policy on Older Persons in 1999. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 obliges children and, for childless senior citizens, relatives who would inherit their property, to maintain parents and senior citizens who cannot maintain themselves. Maintenance Tribunals decide claims summarily and may order a monthly allowance of up to ₹10,000; a transfer of property made on condition that the transferee will provide basic amenities can be declared void if that condition is not met; abandoning a senior citizen is an offence punishable with imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to ₹5,000, or both; and the state is to provide old-age homes and medical care. Parents may also claim maintenance under the maintenance provision of criminal procedure law.

Social work interventions with older persons include casework and counselling for loneliness, bereavement and family conflict; family counselling and mediation to prevent abuse and abandonment; help with maintenance claims, pensions (such as the old-age pension under the National Social Assistance Programme), health insurance and legal aid; day-care centres, senior citizens' associations and intergenerational programmes; home-based care and support for caregivers; the management of old-age homes to standards that protect dignity and autonomy; dementia care and palliative care; elder-abuse helplines, including the national helpline for senior citizens, Elderline (14567); and advocacy for income security and accessible services. The strengths perspective matters here: older persons are resources for their families and communities, not only dependants.

Models of disability shape practice. The charity or moral model treats disability as misfortune or the result of past deeds, and persons with disabilities as objects of pity and alms. The medical model locates disability in the individual's impairment, to be diagnosed, treated and cured by professionals. The social model, set out by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation in its Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976) and named by Mike Oliver in 1983, distinguishes impairment (a condition of the body or mind) from disability (the disadvantage created by a society that fails to remove barriers of access, attitude and organisation); the remedy is to change society. The human rights model, embodied in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, treats persons with disabilities as rights-holders entitled to equality, participation and dignity. The biopsychosocial model of the WHO's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (2001) integrates body functions and structures, activities and participation, and environmental and personal factors.

The disability movement drove the shift from welfare to rights. The independent living movement began with Ed Roberts and others at Berkeley, where the first Center for Independent Living opened in 1972, and its slogan "Nothing about us without us" became the motto of disability rights worldwide. International milestones include the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981), the World Programme of Action (1982) and the UN Decade of Disabled Persons (1983 to 1992), the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (1993), the Asian and Pacific Decades of Disabled Persons with the Biwako framework (2002) and the Incheon Strategy (2012), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted in 2006 and in force from 2008, which India ratified in 2007; 3 December is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. National milestones include the Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992; the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995, which recognised seven disabilities; the National Trust Act 1999 for persons with autism, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and multiple disabilities; the National Policy for Persons with Disabilities (2006); the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016; and the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) launched in 2015.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, which replaced the 1995 Act and came into force in April 2017, recognises 21 specified disabilities, including locomotor disability, blindness and low vision, hearing impairment, speech and language disability, intellectual disability, specific learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, mental illness, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, dwarfism, acid attack victims, chronic neurological conditions, blood disorders such as haemophilia, thalassaemia and sickle cell disease, Parkinson's disease and multiple disabilities. A "person with benchmark disability" has at least 40 per cent of a specified disability. The Act raised reservation in government posts to 4 per cent and in higher education seats to 5 per cent, provides free education to children with benchmark disabilities from 6 to 18 years, requires accessibility in buildings, transport and information, sets up the Chief Commissioner and State Commissioners and special courts, and creates offences for atrocities against persons with disabilities. Social work interventions include community-based rehabilitation (whose WHO guidelines of 2010 cover health, education, livelihood, social and empowerment components), certification and the unique disability identity card, inclusive education, family support, vocational rehabilitation, and support to self-advocacy groups.

Approaches to women in development have changed. Women in Development (WID), influenced by Ester Boserup's Woman's Role in Economic Development (1970), sought to integrate women into development programmes. Women and Development (WAD) argued that women were already part of development but on unequal terms. Gender and Development (GAD), from the 1980s, focused on the social relations of gender and the power structures that produce inequality, and on changing them. Caroline Moser (1989), building on Maxine Molyneux, distinguished practical gender needs, arising from women's existing roles (water, fuel, health care), from strategic gender needs, which challenge women's subordinate position (legal rights, control over property, freedom from violence, political voice). The Beijing Platform for Action (1995) made gender mainstreaming the global strategy.

Gender disparity in India is expressed across domains. In education, the 2011 Census recorded literacy of 82.1 per cent for men and 65.5 per cent for women. In health, it appears in maternal mortality, anaemia (which NFHS-5, 2019–21, found in 57 per cent of women aged 15 to 49), and in the sex ratio, 943 women per 1,000 men overall and 918 girls per 1,000 boys aged 0 to 6 in 2011, which reflects sex-selective practices. In property, the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 made daughters coparceners with equal rights by birth, a position the Supreme Court confirmed in Vineeta Sharma v Rakesh Sharma (2020), but women still own a small share of land. In employment and livelihood, women's labour force participation is low, much of their work is unpaid or informal, and they face wage gaps and occupational segregation. In decision-making, one-third reservation in panchayats and municipalities has brought women into local government, and the 106th Amendment (2023) provides for reservation in legislatures after delimitation. Diana Pearce (1978) coined the "feminisation of poverty" for the growing share of women among the poor, linked to female-headed households, unpaid care work, lower wages and weaker entitlements.

Gender-based violence takes many forms across the life course: sex-selective abortion and neglect of girls; child marriage; dowry harassment and dowry deaths; domestic violence (NFHS-5 found that about 29 per cent of ever-married women aged 18 to 49 had experienced physical or sexual violence by a husband); sexual harassment at work and in public; rape and sexual assault; trafficking; so-called honour crimes; acid attacks; and online abuse. The constitutional safeguards are equality (Article 14), non-discrimination with special provisions for women (Articles 15(1) and 15(3)), equality of opportunity in employment (Article 16), the directive principles on adequate livelihood and equal pay (Article 39(a) and (d)) and maternity relief (Article 42), the fundamental duty to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women (Article 51A(e)), reservation of not less than one-third of seats for women in panchayats and municipalities (Articles 243D and 243T), and the 106th Amendment.

Institutional support includes the National Commission for Women (1990 Act); Mission Shakti (from 2021–22), with its Sambal component for safety (One Stop Centres, the women's helpline 181 and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched in 2015) and its Samarthya component for empowerment (including shelter homes, crèches and maternity benefit); and Protection Officers under the 2005 Act. Social work interventions with survivors include crisis support and safety planning, counselling, medical and legal aid, shelter, help with protection orders and maintenance, livelihood and housing support, and long-term empowerment through women's groups; preventive work includes gender sensitisation in schools and communities, work with men and boys, and campaigns against dowry, child marriage and sex selection. The worker respects the survivor's decisions, avoids victim-blaming and does not pressure reconciliation where violence continues.