Statutory social work is a mode of intervention within social work which poses many emotional and physical challenges to social workers. Social workers execute the implementing of the Children's Act (Act 38 of 2005) through the statutory removal process and they are the primary facilitators of this process. The goal of the statutory removal process is to protect children from abuse, neglect and exploitation by their biological parents or carers. Although research has been done previously about the experiences of social workers with regards to the statutory removal process, the research was limited to studies in America and England. The goal of this study was to explore the experiences of social workers concerning the statutory removal process in South Africa in order to determine what the influences of these experiences were on the implementation of the statutory removal process. The research study is a qualitative study and a phenomenological strategy was followed to determine the social workers' experiences of the statutory removal process. The researcher made use of non-probability sampling through purposeful sampling to select participants for the study. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 26 social workers who are directly involved with the statutory removal of children. Interviewing took place until a saturation point was reached in the study. All interviews were transcribed for the purpose of data analyses, after which themes and sub-themes were identified. The themes and sub-themes were verified against existing literature, after which conclusions and recommendations were made. / MSW, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Statutory social work is a mode of intervention within social work which poses many emotional and physical challenges to social workers. Social workers execute the implementing of the Children's Act (Act 38 of 2005) through the statutory removal process and they are the primary facilitators of this process. The goal of the statutory removal process is to protect children from abuse, neglect and exploitation by their biological parents or carers. Although research has been done previously about the experiences of social workers with regards to the statutory removal process, the research was limited to studies in America and England. The goal of this study was to explore the experiences of social workers concerning the statutory removal process in South Africa in order to determine what the influences of these experiences were on the implementation of the statutory removal process. The research study is a qualitative study and a phenomenological strategy was followed to determine the social workers' experiences of the statutory removal process. The researcher made use of non-probability sampling through purposeful sampling to select participants for the study. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 26 social workers who are directly involved with the statutory removal of children. Interviewing took place until a saturation point was reached in the study. All interviews were transcribed for the purpose of data analyses, after which themes and sub-themes were identified. The themes and sub-themes were verified against existing literature, after which conclusions and recommendations were made. / MSW, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014