This paper argues the case for taking a critical realist (CR) approach to social work research. The normativity in social work is often under-communicated in the social sciences, resulting in research that has an unclear value base as its starting point. Social work practice promotes social change and people's development, empowerment, and liberation. By taking a CR of view as a starting point for researching social problems, the focus shifts towards explaining phenomena by revealing and discussing the mechanisms through which (...) they are produced and maintained. Child welfare issues are argued to be “wicked problems”, on top of which the practice of social work itself is a complex field. Two studies from the field of child and family welfare are presented here to illustrate how CR has been fruitfully applied in research on such complex phenomena. These two studies comprise research on child protection assessment and parental high conflict. (shrink)