- Title
- Social work and the new social service professions in South Africa
- Creator
- Gray, M.
- Relation
- Social Work: a Professional Journal for the Social Worker Vol. 36, Issue 1, p. 99-109
- Relation
- http://academic.sun.ac.za/soc_work/journal.htm
- Publisher
- Universiteit Stellenbosch, Department of Social Work
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 1999
- Description
- This paper examines the effects of the adoption of a social development paradigm on human resource planning within the welfare sector, focusing particularly on the consequences for social work and the rise of the social service professions. Social work, both in South Africa and in the Western world, evolved out of a political process which gave it legitimate sanction to offer social welfare services. In fact, in South Africa, the development of social work as a profession was intimately tied to the development of government social welfare provision. Thus, for forty years social work enjoyed government support and played a dominant role in the provision of organised welfare services, both government and private. Within the apartheid welfare system, private or voluntary welfare organisations were subsidised by government as recognised partners in welfare provision. In keeping with apartheid policy, their focus was mainly, though not exclusively, on white urban populations. Through the struggle years of the 1980s non-governmental organisations, outside the established welfare sector, gained prominence. Foreign funding to support the struggle against apartheid and to address the needs of the neglected majority, increasingly became channelled through this anti-establishment sector. With the advent of the first democratic government in South Africa in 1994 the non-government sector was bound to exert a great deal of influence on future policies and practices within the welfare and development arenas. The African National Congress (ANC 1994) formulated its policy in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which laid the foundations for reconstruction and development in South Africa. RDP policy provided a blueprint for social development, which like most social development frameworks, was practically unworkable and pie-in-the-sky (Gray 1998b1 Midgley 1997). The RDP soon gave way to Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) as the dominant economic paradigm. However, its principles remained highly influential in the formation of policy within specific sectors. especially within welfare (McKendrick 1998a). Crucial to this examination of the effects of the social development paradigm on human resource planning within welfare is my view of the process leading up to the formation of the Council for Social Service Professions. It provides a backdrop to the discussion which follows. While realising that others might take a different view, my interpretation of recent events is offered in the spirit of healthy academic debate and, hopefully, it will be seen in that light. There is much that needs open discussion and debate if we are to progress successfully along the path which has been mapped out for us.
- Subject
- social work; South Africa; Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/30905
- Identifier
- uon:2727
- Identifier
- ISSN:0037-8054
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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