EDITORIAL

Editorial

Sulina Green

Department of Social Work, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The topics in this issue of Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk take stock of the ways in which welfare policies, social work approaches and education programmes enhance welfare service delivery, organisational management, community development and family functioning.

Three papers share concerns about the influence on welfare service delivery of welfare policies, management strategies and social work approaches. One article, for instance, looks creatively at the global impact of neoliberal economics on the day-to-day practices of social workers in terms of the marketisation, consumerisation, managerialisation and deprofessionalisation of social work as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Another article explores the management tasks of frontline social workers in the non-profit organisation sector in a big city and describes the management strategies utilised by them. A third article draws a comparison between the asset-based community-led development approach and the more traditional needs-based approach to community development in engaging stakeholders.

The next two articles deal with education programmes. One offers suggestions from social work doctoral graduates on what candidates need to know before they enrol for doctoral studies. The other reports on how an empowerment programme for child-carers in private places of temporary safe-care can be compiled to equip child-carers with skills to act in the best interest of the children in their care.

The focus of the following three articles is on family life and experiences. The first article is a study of narratives of South African parents whose adult children have emigrated and explains how social workers can assist parents in dealing with the aftermath of their children's emigration. The second article investigates the perceptions of surrogacy among childless women, and the findings of the study reveal that they felt sufficiently informed about surrogacy to consider it as an option addressing their childlessness brought about by infertility. The last article reports that the level of connectedness between family members influences how they deal with adolescents in conflict with the law.