Decisions made by social workers during the rendering of services play a crucial role
in foster care. This study employed a qualitative approach to explore the factors that
influence the decisions made by social workers when rendering foster care services,
and to develop a matrix to guide decision-making. A collective case study design,
informed by the explorative, descriptive and contextual designs, was used. The
intuitive, analytic and mixed theories of decision-making served as the conceptual
framework of the study. The populations of the study were social workers rendering
foster care services in government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and
their supervisors. One case file of each social worker sampled, was consulted as an
additional data source. The sampling technique was purposively sampling with a set
of criteria to enable data optimisation. Triangulation of data collection methods was
utilised, namely, case file analysis and semi-structured interviews with social workers
and supervisors. Case studies are context-based and the data collection occurred in
the natural settings of the participants. Ethical clearance was obtained for the study
and before the commencement of data collection participants were fully briefed about
the study and informed consent was obtained. The data collection instruments, a
guide of case file analysis and two interview guides, were piloted twice in both
government and NGOs. The data collection was audio recorded and an independent
transcriber was used to transcribe the data to control for researcher-influence on the
manipulation of the data. Trustworthiness was addressed by ensuring credibility,
transferability, dependability and confirmability of the data collected. Both the top
down or deductive data analysis approach, and the bottom up or inductive approach
were adopted to analyse the data. Findings on the social workers’ decision-making
processes, decisions made, factors influencing decision-making and the nature of
decisions were explored and described in the assessment phase (including the intake,
prevention and early intervention, as well as the investigation stages), the placement
phase and the supervision phase of foster care services. These findings and the
participants’ suggestions on what a decision-making matrix should address, were
synthesised and the matrix to guide the decision-making of social workers rendering
foster care services was developed. / Social Work / D. Phil (Social Work)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/27423 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Naicker, Pathamavathy |
| Contributors | Botha, Petro |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (x, 440 pages) : color illustrations, color map, application/pdf |
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