This article documents the development of a community-based drug intervention for low- to mild-risk drug users who surrendered as part of the Philippine government's anti-drug campaign. It highlights the importance of developing evidence-informed drug recovery interventions that are appropriate to the Asian culture and to developing economies. Interviews and consultations with users and community stakeholders reveal the need for an intervention that would improve the drug recovery skills and life skills of users. Evidence-based interventions were adapted using McKleroy and colleagues’ (2006) Map of Adaptation Process (MAP) framework. The resulting intervention reflected the country's collectivist culture, relational values, propensity for indirect and non-verbal communication, and interdependent self-construal. The use of small groups, interactive and creative methodologies, and the incorporation of music and prayer also recognised the importance of these in the Philippine culture.

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Summary The “war on drugs” in the Philippines has left a generation of Filipino orphaned children in deep grief and social disarray. Using feminist memory work as critical methodology and intervention design, this study examines accounts of 56 orphaned children and how they exercise agency embedded in the collective remembering of a traumatic past (i.e. rooted in painful memories of tokhang or community police operations) and to identify social structures that marginalize their present and future lifeworld. Findings Findings show three overarching themes namely: (1) reclaiming stripped agency in the loss and injustice of the past, (2) holding on to crippled agency in the sadness and insecurity of the present, and (3) carrying on with agency to hope for healing and justice in a reimagined future. Applications Insights and recommendations to critical praxis of social work in light of an ongoing drug war are further discussed which include strengthening civil societies and intersectoral collaborations, integrating specific social provisions for tokhang survivors in the creation of a national orphan policy, and using digital memorialization. Guided by enacting ethics and politics of caring for and with the marginalized, social workers working alongside expanded communities of care are called to remember love despite traumatic pains and to restore homes for orphaned children in the midst of state insecurity.

Many years of labour migration have opened opportunities as well as exposed overseas Filipino workers to health vulnerabilities. In the light of the increasing number of HIV cases in the country, these workers may be conceived as an at-risk group in need of careful attention. This study, which focuses on the experiences of HIV-positive overseas Filipino workers, describes the meanings HIV carries, together with implications for workers' identities as they return home to their families. Recognising that HIV may affect different groups in different ways, we analysed 13 accounts from heterosexual men and women and gay men from the lens of intersectionality. We found three major storylines, namely: the 'fallen hero' and the struggle of losing the body for heterosexual men; 'children in poverty' and the struggle of losing the mind for heterosexual women; and the 'crushed dream' and the struggle of losing dignity for gay men. Surviving with HIV and poverty in the context of continuing heteronormative familial duties suggests the need for family-centered interventions for HIV-positive overseas Filipino workers.

A discursive-materialist framework of agency asserts the mutual constitution of agency within cultural discursive, economic, and embodied material structures. Understanding how HIV-positive men who have sex with men in the Philippines negotiate agency vis-a-vis wider social structures, we utilized Foucault's care of the self to locate agency in relationships with the self, others, and the broader world. Using data from narratives of 20 Filipino HIV-positive men who have sex with men, we analyzed the negotiation of agency as HIV-positive as embedded in the unique discursive terrain of Roman Catholicism and the economic materiality of a developing country. Three main processes of negotiating agency are elaborated: (1) questioning the spiritual self and the sexual body in the relationship with the self, (2) navigating interpersonal limits to care giving in the relationship with others, and (3) reclaiming human dignity in health care in the relationship with the broader world. Theoretical insights on the discursive and material constitution of healing in light of discursive and material challenges are discussed.