While Part II of the book focused on social workers’ recognition of the subjectivities of service users as one of the central components of the helping relationship, Part III focuses on the second component: the recognition of the external world and material aspects of poverty. This recognition provides the basis for rights-based practice. Seeing rights-based practice as a necessary complement to relationship-based practice is an organising principle of the PAP. Intervention in the material aspects of poverty and improving them are achieved through four strategies: the active realisation of rights, material assistance, community work and policy practice. This part of the book focuses on the practice of the active realisation of rights and material assistance.

The first chapter of this part (Chapter 10) is titled ‘What is active in the active exercising of rights?’ and serves as a theoretical and conceptual introduction to the following three chapters. In addition, it describes the guidelines for the new role of Rights Exercising Social Workers, which was developed with the adoption of the PAP by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services. Loyal to the PAP's commitment to seeing the emotional and material worlds of service users as interconnected, this chapter also explains how rights-based practice can become therapeutic.

Chapter 11, ‘Material help and a flexible budget’, addresses the material assistance provided in all PAP programmes. Throughout the history of social work, there has been a complex relationship between responses to emotional needs and responses to material needs. In the PAP, the internal and external realms are perceived as connected, so practice should seek to simultaneously respond to both. This chapter presents a case study in order to explore the need for material assistance in working with people in poverty. In addition, based on experience in using material assistance in PAP programmes, its characteristics – immediacy and flexibility – are discussed.

Chapter 12, ‘Active rights exercising: advanced’, focuses on the difficult issue of working with service users under circumstances where there are no legal rights that they can actualise.