Bachelor of Social Work

Purpose

The purpose of the Bachelor of Social Work Degree is to provide a well-grounded, generic, professional education that prepares reflexive graduates who are able to engage with people from micro- to macro-levels of social work, within a dynamic socio-political context. The qualification is designed to equip graduates to engage people in problem-solving, promote social change and development, social cohesion and the empowerment and liberation of people. Underscored by principles of respect for human dignity and diversity, social justice, balancing human rights and its corollary duties and collective responsibilities, and underpinned by theories of social work, social and human sciences and locally specific knowledge, such qualification, which is benchmarked against the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training, allows for registration to practice as a social worker in South Africa.

The purpose of the qualification will furthermore be to provide graduates with the minimum requirements for accreditation and registration with the South African Council for Social Service Professions. The course content relates to the purpose of the qualification, and is aimed at providing learners with knowledge (the ability to recall data); understanding (comprehension of the meaning); attitude (growth related to affective experiences related to the module) and skills (the ability to integrate theory and practice).

Rationale

Since 1997, South Africa has adopted the social developmental paradigm of welfare, thus supporting a people-centered approach to social and economic development. Social work plays a key role in addressing the many developmental needs of the South African society through social work services provided within many sectors such as government departments, businesses, non-governmental organisations and private practice.

One of the greatest challenges to social work education and training is to prepare graduates to respond to local realities against the backdrop of rapid national, regional and global transitions and an increasingly integrated global world order, which impact on the lives and livelihoods of people in profound ways. In developing national standards for social work education, cognisance must be taken of the historical background in South Africa to social work. As an organised profession practicing during the pre-democratic era, social work was part of the state machinery and was complicit in the implementation of unjust apartheid laws and practices. Awareness of this has important implications for social work education so that oppressive practices are not condoned, sanctioned and reproduced within the profession. It is important to point out, though, that social work has always had its more radical and emancipatory thrusts, directed at promoting social justice, respecting human dignity, enhancing human well-being, and strengthening universal human rights, while balancing these against cultural diversities that might violate the rights of certain individuals and groups. Social workers witness on a daily basis the effects of political decisions and policies on the lives of people. They are thus in strategic positions to contribute to the development of humane and just social policies, to challenge those that are pernicious, and to bridge any dichotomies between macro- and micro-level analyses and intervention.

Social work education and training cannot remain static. It has to be responsive to the influence of history on contemporary life; address current life issues as social workers engage people in problem-solving, and societal change initiatives; and work towards greater socio-economic equality. The qualification is therefore designed to:

• Be broad and flexible enough to be responsive to different contexts.
• Be of sufficient complexity to ensure that graduates possess the capacity to think on their feet.
• Facilitate transfer of knowledge and skills from one context to another.
• Ensure that graduates uphold requisite ethical standards.
• Allow graduates to register with the professional council to practice and pursue postgraduate studies.

There are huge diversities in social work practice settings, ranging from clinical practice to political advocacy, so the options for electives and majors are wide within a range of cognate disciplines.

As social work is an applied discipline and profession, the main focus in this qualification is on applied competencies. Notwithstanding this, the qualification must demonstrate an appropriate balance between theory and practice, with suitable alignment from the first to the final year of study. The applied competencies should be foregrounded by a relevant conceptual framework and by core knowledge requisites.

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

A learner with the Further Education and Training Certificate: Social Auxiliary Work (Level 4) will be able to apply for access to the Social Work qualification. In addition, learners with the Further Education and Training Certificate: Social Auxiliary Work (Level 4), Occupational Certificate: Community Development Worker (Level 4), Occupational Certificate: Early Childhood Development Practitioner (Level 4), Further Education and Training Certificate: Child and Youth Care Work (Level 4) and Further Education and Training Certificate: Theology and Ministry (Level 4) obtained at the institution will be able to apply for admission to the qualification based on Recognition of Prior Learning.

The above criteria will determine whether a prospective learner will qualify to register for this qualification without a Senior Certificate. In addition, the procedure for admission based on RPL may, within the sole discretion of the institution, include compliance with one or more of the following requirements:

• Specific results in a set of admission tests.
• Production of proof of alleged skills.
• Successful interviews.

Entry Requirements

The minimum entry requirements are

1. Senior Certificate (SC) with endorsement.
2. National Senior Certificate (NSC) granting access to Bachelor's Degree admission.
3. National Certificate Vocational (NCV) at Level 4 granting access to Bachelor's Degree admission.

This qualification consists of compulsory modules at Levels 5, 6 and 7 totalling 540 Credits.

Compulsory Modules, Level 5, 96 Credits

• Introduction to Social Work Methodology, 12 Credits.
• Introduction to Social Work, 12 Credits.
• Introduction to Practical Training, 6 Credits.
• Creative Communication in Intercultural Work, 6 Credits.
• Personal Calling, the Church and Community, 6 Credits.
• Professional Writing, 6 Credits.
• Introduction to Psychology, 12 Credits.
• Child and Adolescent Development, 12 Credits.
• Introduction to Sociology, 12 Credits.
• Social Dynamics within Global and National Transitions, 12 Credits.

Compulsory Modules, Level 6, 120 Credits

• Case Work as a Method, 12 Credits.
• Practical Training: Case Work, 6 Credits.
• Contemporary Issues in Social Work, 12 Credits.
• Group Work as Method, 12 Credits.
• Practical Training: Group Work, 6 Credits.
• Poverty, Unemployment and Social Injustice, 12 Credits.
• Diaconia as Hermeneutic Approach, 12 Credits.
• Adult Development and Ageing, 12 Credits.
• Psychopathology, 12 Credits.
• Social Theories, 12 Credits.
• Structural Determinants in Current Day South Africa, 6, 12 Credits.

Compulsory Modules, Level 7, 156 Credits

• Case Work: Multidimensional Perspectives, 12 Credits.
• Community Work as Method, 12 Credits.
• Practical Training: Case work, 24 Credits.
• Substance Abuse and Legislation, 12 Credits.
• Child- and Family Care Practice and Legislation, 12 Credits.
• Social Research, 12 Credits.
• Practical Training: Group and Community Work, 24 Credits.
• Social Psychology, 12 Credits.
• Personality Psychology, 12 Credits.
• Sociology of Development, 12 Credits.
• Research in Sociology, 12 Credits.

Compulsory Modules, Level 8, 168 Credits

• Case Work: Intervention Strategies, 12 Credits.
• Group Work: Intervention Strategies, 12 Credits.
• Community Work: Practice Models and Strategies, 12 Credits.
• Management, 12 Credits.
• Supervision, 12 Credits.
• Practical Training: Supervision and Management, 12 Credits.
• Research Project, 24 Credits.
• Practical Training: Case Work, 24 Credits.
• Practical Training: Group Work, 24 Credits.
• Practical Training: Community Work, 24 Credits.

1. Develop and consolidate a professional identity as social worker.
2. Apply core values and principles of social work.
3. Demonstrate holistic assessment and intervention with individuals, families, groups and communities.
4. Show understanding of the place of codes of ethics vis-a-vis the moral impulse.
5. Work with a range of diversities.
6. Demonstrate ability to undertake research.
7. Demonstrate knowledge, practice skills and theories.
8. Understand policy and legislation.
9. Write and communicate professional knowledge.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 1

• Understand the power of process and building sound relationships.
• Demonstrate ability in advancing human rights, and working with/for the most disadvantaged groups in society.
• Demonstrate commitment to work toward social justice and egalitarian societies.
• Show understanding of the self as an important instrument of intervention.
• Demonstrate commitment to caring, building humane societies and mutual inter-dependence.
• Use validation as one of the core empowerment strategies in working with individuals, families, groups and communities.
• Show willingness to be for the other and ability for empathic entry into the lives of people.
• Demonstrate skills in critical thinking and scholarly attitudes of reasoning, and openness to new experiences and paradigms.
• Demonstrate commitment to professional ethics and on-going professional development.
• Demonstrate ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity and to think on one's feet.
• Show understanding of social work as a context-embedded and responsive profession.
• Demonstrate ability to understand the links between the personal and professional dimensions of life and the relationship between the micro-and the macro-aspects of learners' lives and the lives of people with whom they engage.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 2

• Demonstrate ability to respect the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings.
• Demonstrate understanding that every person has the ability to solve his/her problem.
• Demonstrate ability to separate acceptance of the person while challenging and changing conditions and behaviours that are self-destructive or harmful to others.
• Uphold the value of doing no harm and practicing beneficence.
• Show understanding of the mutual inter-dependence among human beings and between human beings and other living entities, and a commitment to inter-generational equity and continuity (third generation rights) as advocated by 'green' social work.
• Respect the rights of people to inclusion in decision-making and in the planning and use of services.
• Respect rights to self-determination (with due consideration to potential structural constraints) and confidentiality, within legislative constraints.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 3

• Recognise humans as bio-psycho-social (BPS) beings, as the biological, psychological and social (including the spiritual) dimensions of life are inter-connected and mutually reinforcing.
• Undertake holistic BPS assessments to facilitate holistic intervention directly and/or through referrals to appropriate professionals and resources.
• Show understanding of the Person-in-Environment gestalt, appreciating that the environment consists of the natural, geographic environment and the various social systems, both proximate and distal, that surround and impact individual and family functioning.
• Show understanding of historical and contemporary BPS impacts on human functioning and capabilities development.
• Demonstrate ability to undertake appropriate interventions ranging from direct protective/therapeutic/educational interventions with individuals, families and groups to broader community interventions, including education, social activism and/or advocacy at local, regional and/or international levels.
• Demonstrate ability to use a range of strategies to monitor and evaluate interventions.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 4

• Show understanding of the place of codes of ethics vis-a-vis the moral impulse.
• Demonstrate awareness of international, regional and national statements of ethical principles and codes of ethics.
• Critical engagement with codes of ethics.
• Recognise the inter-relatedness between the moral impulse and codes of ethics.
• Demonstrate awareness of the boundaries of professional practice and what constitutes unprofessional conduct.
• Show understanding of principled ethics and feminist relational ethics, and skills of negotiating ethical decision-making through discourse ethics and dialogue, and through peer consultation and supervision.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 5

• Demonstrate self-awareness regarding personal and cultural values, beliefs, traditions and biases and how these might influence the ability to develop relationships with people, and to work with diverse population groups.
• Demonstrate awareness of self as an individual and as member of collective socio-cultural groups in terms of strengths and areas for further development.
• Demonstrate knowledge about non-discrimination on the basis of culture, nationality, ethnicity, religion, language, race, gender, language, physical status, and sexual orientation.
• Demonstrate ability to minimise group stereotypes and prejudices and ensure that racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic behaviour, policies and structures are not reproduced through social work practice.
• Demonstrate ability to form relationships with, and treat, all persons with respect and dignity irrespective of such person's cultural and ethnic beliefs, gender, nationality, language, religion, disability and sexual orientation.
• Demonstrate ability to serve as cultural mediators through the use of constructive confrontation, conflict mediation, discourse ethics and dialogue where local cultural values, traditions and practices might violate universally accepted human rights, as entrenched in instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the UN Vienna Declaration (1993), the African Charter on Human and People's Rights (1981); the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990); and the SA Bill of Rights as enshrined in the Constitution (1996).

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 6

• Demonstrate skills in the use of qualitative and/or quantitative research methods.
• Recognise and apply the ethical requisites of social work research.
• Demonstrate ability to use research to inform practice.
• Show appreciation of the value of practice-based research, practice as research, and research as practice.
• Demonstrate ability to document and communicate research findings to professional and non-professional audiences.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 7

• Demonstrate ability to make judicious selection from the wide range of available knowledge and theories to facilitate conceptualisation at higher levels of abstraction.
• Select from a range of theoretical perspectives and practice skills to facilitate effective interventions at the level of the individual, family, group, organisation and community.
• Show understanding of the structural determinants of people's lives and how criteria such as race, class, gender, language, religion, geographic location, disability and sexual orientation might constitute sources of privilege and/or oppression.
• Show understanding of the complex relationship between the power of structural determinants and the power of human agency, and the relationship between freedom and responsibility.
• Show awareness of strategies to facilitate praxis and consciousness-raising to enable people to understand and challenge structural determinants of normalisation, oppression and/or privilege.
• Demonstrate critical understanding of how socio-structural inequalities, discrimination, oppression, and social, political, economic and environmental injustices impact on human functioning and development at all levels.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 8

• Understand how policy and legislation influence conception of issues as social problems, interventions and resource allocation.
• Demonstrate ability to analyse, formulate, evaluate and advocate policies that enhance human well-being and environmental sustainability.
• Understand the relationship between the law and social work.
• Demonstrate knowledge of global, regional and national declarations, policies and legislation relevant to social welfare and social work.
• Demonstrate knowledge of national, provincial and local governance structures, and the general laws and charters governing social welfare policy and social work services in South Africa.
• Understand comparative welfare policies in respect of the residual, institutional, industrial achievement and developmental frameworks and their implications for access to social services on the selective universal continuum.
• Understand the historical and political dimensions of welfare policies.

Associated Assessment Criteria for Exit Level Outcome 9

• Demonstrate ability to write coherent, logical, grammatically correct and well considered reports/memos whether for internal or external use.
• Show awareness of the ethical and legal aspects of report-writing.
• Show awareness of the targeted audience of any particular communication, the central messages to be communicated and how these are to be communicated. For example: probation reports; reports for children's court enquiries; divorce settlements; referrals for medical/psychiatric assessment and treatment; support for a social action campaign.
• Demonstrate clear, coherent and engaging oral communication skills.
• Demonstrate ability to apply interviewing skills.
• Demonstrate ability to record and disseminate social work research findings and knowledge.
• Demonstrate ability to function in a multilingual context and to use oral and/or written translations when necessary.

Integrated Assessment

Formative and Summative Assessment

Due to the practical nature of social work, practical modules form part of every year of study. It is imperative that learners pass both the theoretical and practical modules in order to pass the course. Learners also need to demonstrate the ability to integrate theory and practice successfully in an integrated assessment (the utilisation of portfolios).

Learners will be assessed in terms of knowledge (i.e. remembering); understanding and applying (i.e. skills). In terms of knowledge, assessment will be scaffolded in terms of cognitive processes that should develop in each of the four year levels. Learners will therefore be assessed on a scale that moves from factual and conceptual knowledge on a first-year level to a procedural and metacognitive level of knowledge on the fourth-year level.