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Despite the large amount of literature on cross-cultural social work practice, the meanings of culture and crossing have not been empirically examined. This article presents the findings of a study involving 30 social work practitioners in a Canadian metropolitan city. Grounded in the lived experiences of the practitioners, at least three different modes of crossing are identified. The findings also indicate that many practitioners tend to define culture as a complex whole, but not in a deterministic manner. Interwoven with race and ethnicity, culture interacts with an individual's preferences and environment. The author contends that to integrate theory and practice, we need to examine how frontline practitioners understand some important but takenfor- granted social work concepts.

History of Vancouver Neighbourhood Houses and Beyond / Sean Lauer, Miu Chung Yan, and Eleanor Stebner -- The Eyes and Ears of the Community: Engaging Citizens and Community Advocacy / Oliver Schmidtke -- Mechanism of Connection: Accessibility and Beyond / Miu Chung Yan -- Social Infrastructure for Building Community / Sean Lauer -- Trajectories of Life and Belonging in the Neighbourhood Houses of Metro Vancouver / Pilar Riaño-Alcalá and Erika Ono -- From Immigrant to Citizen: Life Stories of Transformation / Jenny Francis -- Limitations and Potentials of Neighbourhood Houses in Community-Building / Miu Chung Yan and Sean Lauer.

Accessibility to public resources has been a major challenge to many service users. The fragmentation among different organizational stakeholders in social service generates a 'wicked problem' that creates an institutional barrier for service users in the community to navigate the maze of service networks. However, this institutional barrier has not been fully discussed and articulated in the social service literature. Based on the findings of a study on Neighbourhood House in Metro Vancouver, Canada, we argue that as a place-based community service organization it has successfully generated an institutional accessibility for service providers and service users to reach each other.

Abstract
The urban poor in many advanced economies have become subject to the problem of food security. So far, the charity food model, such as foodbanks and meal programs, has been the key solution to this problem. This model tends to undermine service users' aspirations to eat healthy food and their agentic function for change. Using a case study approach, we examine how a place-based community organization, with roots in the settlement house tradition, adopts an alternative approach to food security issues in an impoverished neighborhood. Adopting an activist and a right-to-food philosophy, it has brought together local residents to collectively tackle prevalent hunger and unhealthy food supply problems in the community.

The paper contrasts the conference focus on the democratic renewal of social practices, an internal process particular to the European and North-American contexts, with the development of social practices in China, where both external and internal forces influence social workers' dealings with democratization and indigenization of well-established Western concepts. The goals of the authors are to problematize the questions of democratic renewal and to promote international communication among social practitioners.

AbstractWhile acknowledging mutual alignment in their critique of social work's dominant Eurocentric lens, indigenous and indigenization of social work have thus far forged separate routes. Indigenous social work predominantly focuses on groups in the settler colonial states of North America and Australia where the term 'indigenous' as an official identity category is embraced by groups to signify their a priori territorial claims, traditional way of life, and distinct world views. Indigenization of social work, on the other hand, primarily deals with the effective transmission of praxis in non-western regions. Yet complex linkages between the two exist that impacts the trajectory of indigenization of social work. This article draws upon indigenous theorizing and transdisciplinary learning to examine the neglect of highly charged concepts such as 'indigenous' and relationally notions of indigeneity within the social work indigenization discourse in China. Further, grounding the analysis within the liminal sphere of China's ethnic minorities, particularly the case of Tibet Autonomous Region, it presents a preliminary discussion on potential ways to conceptualize ways forward.