The purpose of this study is to examine social workers’ discourses about the Swedish sex purchase law and how they perceive that the sex purchase law and the social workers’ professional ethical principles affect the social workers’ ability to support people who are selling sex. This study is a discourse analytical interview study based on a social constructionist perspective. The study focuses on analyzing the interviews based upon an inductive method. The interviews are qualitative and semi-structured. The interviews were conducted by interviews with three social workers with experiences of working with people who sell sex. The central focus of the study is to analyze the social workers’ statements that are regarded as their perceptions. The statements serve as arguments that answers the purpose questions. The results show that the interviewed social workers perceive that the sex purchase laws do affect the social workers’ ability to support people who sell sex. On the other hand, they show disagreement on whether the social workers’ professional ethical principles affected the social workers’ ability to support people who sell sex.

The transition from the previous Child Care Act 74 of 1983 to the new Children’s Act 38 of 2005 has been chaotic. Since the introduction of the Children’s Act 38 of 2005, and its subsequent implementation in April 2012, there has been instability in rendering child protection services. This state of affairs has been caused by some serious loopholes and shortcomings in the new legislation; challenges faced by social workers in adapting to it; lack of capacity of the stakeholders in the child protection field; and the shortage of resources to implement it. The goal of the study was to explore the challenges faced by social workers working in child protection services in implementing the Children’s Act 38 of 2005. The researcher conducted this study from a qualitative approach. The study was applied and exploratory in nature and utilised a collective case study design. There were 18 social workers in the employ of Johannesburg Child Welfare who participated in the study. They were selected through purposive sampling. Data was collected by means of focus group discussions. The findings show that social workers face institutional and infrastructural barriers in implementing the Children’s Act. Furthermore, social workers face massive human resource challenges in the implementation of the Children’s Act and these stem from the shortage of social workers; inadequate training of social workers and high case loads. Shortcomings that have been realised in the implementation of the Children’s Act 38 of 2005 relate to the transfer of children to alternative placements; different interpretations of different sections of the said Act; the fundamental change to a court based system of renewing the placement of children; contradictions of the Children’s Act with other legal statutes and societal values; and the over reliance of the child protection system on the foster care system to provide income support for children. The study concluded that the Children’s Act needs to be amended to address its pre-statutory, statutory and post-statutory shortcomings, which create many challenges in its implementation. The study also concluded that the shortage of social workers and/or inadequate training contributes to high case loads, which in turn, influences the effectiveness of child protection services. Recommendations on addressing the challenges faced by social workers in implementing the Children’s Act include the establishment of a kinship care grant; amending the Children’s Act; organising training for all role players involved in implementing the Children’s Act; and addressing technical issues on the implementation of the Children’s Act. / Dissertation (MSW)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

M.A. / A new welfare policy which introduced the developmental approach in the welfare system was implemented during 1997 in South Africa. The developmental approach encourages the introduction of social programs that contribute directly to economic development in the communities. Developmental social welfare implies a variety of role players in a system of social services which focus on social development. Social workers happen to be one of them. A developmental social welfare policy implies that social work should shift focus of attention to strategies that would contribute to social development. The extent of basic development needs in our country demands that social workers should clearly define their roles and outputs at this point in time so as to address these needs and outline their distinctive professional contribution in a social welfare system within socio-economic development. The focus of this people-driven, people-centred approach is on developing human capacity and self-reliance within an enabling environment. The community development process has a major contribution to make in realizing this objective. For community development to take place, people need to act collectively. People need to be organized in the community so that they can be able to function as a unit. Through community development, social workers unleash people's collective potential, build their capacity and help them to organize themselves around common concerns. However, social workers need to recognize the role played by economic factors in development initiatives. Realizing that the new developmental approach was just been introduced to social workers, this study seeks to explore and describe the attitude of social workers towards this paradigm shift.

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This research project attempted to determine whether play therapy used to treat elementary and junior high school children in a School-Based Counseling program is effective. There is conflicting evidence in the literature as to the effectiveness of therapy with children, especially play therapy. This project used a qualitative design to evaluate play therapy used in a School-Base Counseling program (SBC). Randomly selected case files from the 1998-99 academic year were analyzed using questions considering demographic information for each child, the reason the child was referred to the program, the intervention used by the therapist, and the outcomes of therapy. The results of this project are inconclusive, but support the need for more research to be conducted in the area of play therapy.

This study explores the past experiences of graduate social work students enrolled in the Masters in Social Work program at California State University, San Bernardino.

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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, EMDR, is a new clinical treatment shown to be effective for victims of trauma. EMDR is a time efficient, comprehensive methodology backed by positive, controlled research, for the treatment of disturbing experiences that underlie many pathologies. An eight phase treatment approach that includes using eye movements or other left-right stimulation, EMDR helps victims of trauma reprocess disturbing thoughts and memories. The purpose of this research project was to describe and explore the utilization of EMDR by licensed clinical social workers who were registered as members of the National Association of Social Workers.