Welfare Reform on the Web (May 2006): Social Care - Overseas

M.L. Weyers and A. M. van den Berg

International Social Work, vol. 49, 2006, p.177-187

Up to 1994, social work in South Africa was dominated by a therapy-centred approach. After the first democratic elections that year, welfare policy underwent a transformation that resulted in a dispensation where the delivery of developmental social work services by the private sector became a de facto prerequisite for state funding. In many ways local social workers were ill equipped to meet the new challenge. This was partly due to a lack of empirically verified data regarding the factors that would determine success in community work. This gave rise to a research project in which the critical incident technique was used to identify the critical success factors in such services.