Doctoral Degrees (Social Work)

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    Financial literacy education training of frontline social workers in South Africa: need, content, and scope
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-12 ) Jordaan, Adriaan; Engelbrecht, L. K.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Poverty remains a key challenge in South Africa. Though social work is to be conducted from within a social developmental paradigm in South Africa, data elucidates that social workers continue to feel unprepared, unequipped, or irresponsible for assisting service users with challenges of a financial nature. As such, the study sought to explore the views of social workers and financial professionals on the need for-, content of-, and scope of financial literacy education training (FLET) of social workers as a means of striving towards more sustainable social developmental practice, and ultimately, poverty alleviation. A qualitative research approach was utilised in this study. Descriptive-, explorative-, and instrumental case study designs were applied, and purposive- and snowball sampling was utilised to recruit 25 participants from two cohorts. All participants were interviewed via semi-structured interviews conducted over Microsoft Teams. Thereafter, reflexive thematic analysis was used to examine the collected data, which resulted in the generation of eight themes, associated with the study’s first three objectives, which pertains to the investigating views of social workers and financial professionals on the need for-, content of-, and scope of FLET of social workers in South Africa. Key conclusions drawn regarding the first objective are that service users continue to display a dire need for financial literacy, social workers remain largely financially illiterate, and debt continues to be a pervasive challenge. Conclusions pertaining to the second objective were found to point to the notion that the content of FLET of social workers would need to teach basics of personal financial management (PFM), most notably pertaining to budgeting, savings, debt and interest, alongside other non-financial themes that impact upon financial wellbeing such as social- and psychological factors. Finally, pertaining to objective three, conclusions were found to indicate that operational barriers may hinder the operationalisation of FLET of social workers, but that there may be ways of circumnavigating them. Various recommendations were presented as well. Most notably, they pertained to the earlier incorporation and exposure of social workers to FLET, a fierier approach when advocating for the importance of FLET of social workers, and the incorporation of financial literacy in conversations at a policy level.
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    Assessment in child protection services: challenges faced by social workers
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Ndonga, Moreblessing Memory; Strydom, Marianne; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Assessment is the first step in child protection service rendering after a case of possible child abuse and neglect is reported. This assessment is the basis upon which important decisions should be made regarding what actions to take to protect children from abuse and neglect. It is therefore an important part of the task of the social worker in child protection practice worldwide. In South Africa, the execution of assessment in child protection services is paramount in the realisation of the rights of children to care and protection as advocated for in international, regional, and domestic policies and legislation. Despite the importance of assessment in the delivery of child protection services, it remains an under-researched area of enquiry when it comes to daily challenges faced by social workers in executing assessments in child protection services with children and families in South Africa. Hence the goal of this study was to gain an understanding of the challenges that social workers experience in assessment practice in child protection services in the South African context. The rights-based perspective and ecological perspective were chosen as the theoretical frameworks for this study. This study employed a qualitative research approach. It was an exploratory and a descriptive study, within a purposive sample selection of 18 social workers and 5 social work supervisors employed in 3 designated NGOs in the Cape Town area. The primary research instrument utilised in this study was the semi-structured interview schedule, which was developed based on themes emerging from literature. Six themes were derived from the participant interviews by way of thematic analysis. These themes were then further divided into subthemes and categories. The study revealed that when social workers undertake assessments, they are faced with challenges relating to the implementation of tools and challenges in organisations, communities and families that they work in. Many of the challenges that social workers face in regards to the implementation of assessment tools are due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of assessment tools which is linked to a lack of formal and refresher training on the implementation of those tools. As a consequence of the lack of formal training, social work supervisors have been burdened to provide informal training to enable social workers in their organisations to implement assessment tools. It is clear from the study’s findings that there is a strong focus on the implementation of the actuarial-based risk assessment tool which is a standardised scoring tool and that there is a lack of implementation of the consensus-based assessment tool which is the assessment triangle adopted from the United Kingdom. The lack of utilisation of the consensus-based assessment tool seems to impact the ability of social workers to complete comprehensive assessments in relation to alleged child abuse and neglect cases. The findings in this study also revealed that there is a strong emphasis on the implementation of the Children’s Act 38 of 2005 and therefore, professional steps in assessment are not being implemented. This lack of implementation of steps in assessment has been linked to a lack of time due to high caseloads, shortage of organisational resources, shortage of resources, violence in communities, low educational levels in families, and a lack of experience and training of social workers in the implementation of assessment tools and procedures in child protection. Thus, it seems that current assessment practices, including strategies utilised in assessments, are possibly not tailored to the reality of the South African context and therefore pose further challenges to the execution of assessments. It can be concluded that the ability to execute comprehensive assessments will not improve without the improvement of community resources (facilities) and organisational resources (cars, computers, office space, funds and manpower). These resources are necessary to improve the delivery of social services, including the execution of assessments with children and families in order to protect the rights of children to care and protection. Apart from having to address the issue of resources, it is recommended that social workers be provided with sufficient training concerning the implementation of assessment tools and procedures in child protection. Finally, there could be also a need to revise and adapt the current assessment tools to suite the South African context.
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    Social work services to families caring for adult relatives with a mental illness
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) September, Uwarren; Strydom, Marianne; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: When families take care of a relative with a mental illness, it can cause tremendous stress to the family and the patient. Rendering social work services to such families would relieve stress and contribute to everyone’s quality of life. Globally, about one in four families has a relative with a mental illness, and with limited access to and limited resources, families must often look after and care for such relatives. Families must thus contend with multiple sources of stress, including stress relating to their relative's mental illness, symptoms and behaviours, and societal stigmatisation. If support services to families caring for adult relatives with a mental illness are limited or unavailable, families and their relatives with mental illness, suffer. Unfortunately, this is the situation in South Africa where the National Mental Health Policy Framework and Strategic Plan (Department of Health, 2012) and the Mental Health Care Act 17 of 2002, are in support of deinstitutionalising mental health patients. This means that patients should be discharged from mental institutions as soon as reasonably possible to be treated in their communities. Nationally, however, South Africa’s existing mental health frameworks are confronted by numerous challenges, such as the exchange of care of patients from institutions to community-based care, political contemplations in developing policy, stigmatisation of people with mental health issues, and a lack of community-based services. These challenges all directly impact families taking care of a relative with mental illness. Due to an unrelenting increase in people experiencing mental illnesses and the number of families reporting such problems, the demand for and necessity of rendering social work services to families taking care of an adult relative with a mental illness have been emphasised. Apart from the increasing demand for rendering direct social work services to families who take care of people with mental illness, there is also a lack of, or poor and rarely available community-based social work services to families of mentally ill relatives. Amid the drive for deinstitutionalisation and the subsequent focus on community-based mental health services in South Africa, there is insufficient empirical research regarding social work services rendered to families caring for a relative with a mental illness. Existing research does not specify social work services to families caring for a relative with a mental illness but focus mostly on interventions for the mentally ill individual.
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    A work-life perspective on the subjective wellbeing of social workers
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-12) Bredell, Sandra; Engelbrecht, L. K.; Stellenbosch University. Facuty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Social work was declared a scarce skill in South Africa in 2003, as confirmed by the Department of Labour and listed accordingly in the sector skills plan of the Health and Welfare Sector Education and Training Authority in 2008. The profession has since been struggling to survive in the welfare system, which resulted in a challenge to render services to people in need, without enough social workers to do the work. The focus of the Recruitment and Retention Strategy for Social Workers, as mandated by the Minister of Social Development, was to highlight aspects that can have a negative influence on social workers and ultimately on the quality of services rendered to service users. To exacerbate the situation, social workers are facing many challenges in South Africa, such as poor salaries, poor working conditions, insufficient infrastructure, unsafe environments, lack of resources, very high caseloads, and high turnover; to name a few. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an array of situations needed the attention of frontline social workers, who already faced high caseloads and who were expected to push aside their own families’ challenges to render services in often unsafe environments in uncertain times. The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of the subjective wellbeing of social workers from a work-life perspective. Social workers’ wellbeing is important to uphold service delivery of a high quality, while the social workers’ wellbeing and happiness in the profession deserve immediate attention. This study shows the connection between the subjective wellbeing of social workers in both the work and life domains and connect it to the eight dimensions of wellness; in other words, their holistic wellbeing. The conceptual framework of the study synthesises work-life balance and subjective wellbeing with the eight dimensions of wellness, namely emotional, financial, social, spiritual, occupational, physical, intellectual, and environmental dimensions. In this qualitative study, the exploratory and descriptive research designs were deemed appropriate, together with an interpretivist paradigm. It allowed for in-depth exploration of particular issues (work-life perspective and the subjective wellbeing of social workers) that have been studied insufficiently, and developing new ideas on the topic, as well as to connect the information to the eight dimensions of wellness. Non-probability purposive sampling is criterion based and was employed in this study. The participants (11 frontline social workers and 12 supervisors), who contributed in their personal capacity, provided rich and valuable data for the study. The participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule with open-ended questions. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the interviews were conducted using the Zoom platform. For this study, Tesch’s thematic, descriptive approach was utilised to analyse the data. The findings from the empirical investigation revealed that the social worker participants felt stressed and overworked and that they do not receive adequate supervisory support, other than related to work issues, and they admitted to struggling with work-life balance. The participants echoed that there is a spill over from the work to the family domain and vice versa. Therefore, the challenge is not so much to balance the work roles with the rest of one’s life, but rather to balance the different roles in one’s life. The key recommendations were for social workers to undergo South African Council for Social Service Professions (SACSSP)-accredited courses, that prospective social work students should be screened for the course, that organisations should commit to support their staff, and that wellness programmes and the orientation programme for the first two years of employment of frontline social workers should be registered with the SACSSP for Continuous Professional Development points.
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    The challenges experienced by unemployed youth graduates in Botswana: An ecological systems perspective
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Sebidie, Godfrey; Strydom, Marianne; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Education has always been recognised as the means to achieve change, create new ideas, initiate new practices and move towards increasing prosperity. Thus, in many developing countries, tertiary education is increasingly important in facilitating a move into employment as part of an effort to increase prosperity. In Botswana, however, recent evidence suggests that graduates from the country’s tertiary institutions find it difficult to penetrate the labour market. Youth unemployment, especially graduate unemployment, has become a national concern in Botswana. It is normal for young graduates to expect to have a thriving career, yet, when these expectations are not met, unemployed graduates may face challenges in adapting to their situation. To deal with unemployment of youth graduates, the Botswana government established numerous youth intervention initiatives and programmes. However, past and current youth intervention programmes have been unable to mitigate unemployment, resulting in many youth graduates not being employed, some for as long as 10 years. Being unemployed has given rise to Botswana youth graduates having to face many challenges as their unemployed status has influenced their lives in various ways. It was established that, in Botswana, there was no general research or research from a social work perspective on the challenges that unemployed youth graduates were experiencing, which highlighted the possibility of a lack of appropriate services available to unemployed youth graduates. The ecological systems perspective was utilised to illustrate how various factors were interacting on the different systems of the ecological systems theory, as well as how these factors were affecting unemployed youth graduates. The ecological systems perspective was applied as it indicates how people encounter different environments throughout their lives that may influence their behaviour in different ways. A qualitative research approach together with exploratory and descriptive research designs were used to explore the challenges experienced by unemployed youth graduates in Botswana from an ecological systems perspective. Data was gathered through purposive and snowball sampling from the Unemployment Movement of Botswana and programme officers within the Ministry of Youth Empowerment Sport and Culture Development (MYESCD). Individual face-to-face, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were executed as data collection instruments. The research project took place in two phases. The first phase involved twenty unemployed youth graduates and the second phase entailed having two focus group discussions with eight programme officers from the MYESCD who had been working with unemployed youth graduates in the second phase. In total 28 participants took part in the study. Seven themes were then extracted from the participant interviews by way of thematic analysis. These themes were then further divided into subthemes and categories. It was found that unemployed youth graduates were experiencing challenges on the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of the ecological perspective. These challenges included psychological issues, for example, loss of self-esteem, sleeping disorders, depression and harbouring thoughts of suicide, physical challenges such as heart problems, headaches, and high blood pressure, as well as financial challenges such as not being able to provide for their loved ones, and being dependent on extended families. It was found that social work services were needed for unemployed youth graduates in order to promote their human dignity and rights. It is recommended that the Botswana government evaluate existing youth intervention government initiatives and programmes to determine the effectiveness thereof. It is also recommended that the government of Botswana should review the National Youth Policy of 2010 in order to adapt it to include and address current challenges experienced by unemployed youth graduates. Finally, it is recommended that needs assessment should be done to come up with programmes that are relevant and applicable to unemployed youth graduates of Botswana and that are not implemented one-size-fits all programmes.