Abstract

The home visit is a technique and professional act that has been used by Social Work since its beginnings. Despite being widely used, academic literature on home visits carried out by social workers is scarce, so their teaching has been given from experience and not from scientific evidence. This study presents a systematic review of empirical literature on home visits. Specialised databases including Web of Science (WoS), ProQuest, Scopus, EBSCO, Dialnet Plus, and Scielo were used, with no year limitation the recent nature of this field of study. The final selected sample consisted of 13 articles, that were published between 2009 and 2023. The results of this research indicate that home visit is described from different conceptualizations that fall under social work intervention processes. Based on the findings, an integrated three-phase model is proposed a home visit, which implies that the social worker or intervener goes through the stages of preparation, execution and decision-making. It seems relevant to recognise home visit as an evidence-based practice, with home visit registration to evaluate the quality of professionals and the impact of intervention programmes, contributing to the improvement of training for new and older workers, as well as improve reflection and supervision processes. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.