**2.1 Social workers becoming more proactive in social interventions in South Africa**

Despite being considered a relatively newer profession compared with its sister professions that offer social services, social work in Africa is gaining more mileage as it unleashes its repertoire of skills to surmount a conglomeration of social ills that continue to stifle and thwart forces of social and community development [4, 5]. In the last few decades, African governments, but majorly South Africa, have realised the role and importance of social work as a tool of social and community development.

*Prospects and Pitfalls Experienced by Social Workers Working in a Confounding Environment… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105604*

Perhaps this explains the fact that 16 of the 26 public universities have social work programmes that are statutorily governed by the South African Council of Social Service Professions (SACSSP). Opportunely, two other institutions, Hugenote Kollege and South African College of Applied Psychology have recently acquired the South African Council of Social Service Profession's (SACSSP) accreditation, and therefore totalled the social work institutions to 18 [7].

However, despite these institutions, through the funding from the Department of Social Development, endeavouring to increase the number of social workers, South African universities have not produced enough social workers to satisfy all the country's social work needs. According to a study by Van Breda and Addinall [8] in South Africa, by the year 2020, the country had 36,002 population of social workers [8].

Opportunely, the country has seen social workers getting employed to carry out diverse social work interventions ranging from ensuring all children born are supported by child welfare grants, the older persons aptly and timely get their older person's pensions timely in compliance with the Older Person's Act No. 13 of 2006 of South Africa [11]. Further, the government through the Department of Social Development in cohort with the Ministry of Primary Education continues to ensure that virtually all the children in public schools are offered meals [12]. This is to offset the effects of poverty among the families to ensure that all children can engage in education [13]. More so, the Department of Social Development is also actively engaged in ensuring that people with various disabilities are accorded grants commensurate with their challenges. This chapter only reports a few of the activities that social workers are engaged in. However, those activities have been integral in the country's fulfilment of the global agenda that envisage a balanced development of all, as well as fighting ills such as inequalities, illiteracy and poverty, especially among children and women [14]. The activities have also energised the country towards its vision of 2030 as well as its fulfilment of sustainable development goals [15, 16].

#### **2.2 Social work proactivity in research of the contemporary epoch**

Opportunely, the involvement of social workers across the board in surmounting, managing or mitigating the effects of coronavirus needs to be hailed in South Africa. This is to avert many of the psychosocial deficits that coronavirus imposed on the citizens [17]. Indeed, poverty on account of coronavirus has been a thorn in the flesh of many South African citizens and those of many countries in the developing part of the world. Opportunely, social workers and other social service professionals are on a record, especially through nongovernmental organisations such as Childline South Africa, of engaging and undertaking many activities to manage and mitigate the effects of coronavirus. For example, they have initiated various psychosocial-based advocacy towards the philanthropic organisations to step in and assist the desperate communities to meet their basic needs, with food topping the agenda [18].

Imperatively, social workers need to be hailed for their fast and proactive response, proving indeed that they have a cardinal responsibility to offer, manage and address the psychosocial quagmires that coronavirus has imposed on South Africans and other people around the globe [19]. In ubiquitous corners of the country, many social workers are on the record, especially through civil society organisations, in poverty arresting mitigating endeavours such as providing food parcels and offering counselling to those made vulnerable to the impact of coronavirus [18, 19].

Applaudingly, the social workers' advocacy to the philanthropists needs to be increased as government resources to assist the victims of coronavirus run dry. This is because the effects of lockdown destroyed people's economic and occupational bases, leaving them languishing in poverty and failing to meet their basic needs [17]. Opportunely, this saw the government introduce the R 350 social relief of distress (SRD) grant to cushion the effects of poverty on the unemployed [20]. Perhaps it is at this gesture that the country alongside the social workers thanks philanthropists such as Mr. Patrice Motsepe (chairman of African Rainbow Minerals) who mobilised his friends to donate to the government R1-billion to fight against coronavirus. He is also on record exhorting the communities to apply the ethos of ubuntu by coming together in the fight against the scourge of coronavirus [21]. It is imperative that social workers continue to engage other philanthropists to borrow a leaf from the likes of Mr. Motsepe.

Largely also, social workers in the South African context are now increasingly involved in research to widen the scope of quality of social work skills. This has been in response to the ever-increasing ills of social inequalities, and crimes such as gender-based violence, amid several service delivery protests that have pointed to gaps in social work interventions and possibly the skills the social workers acquire [22]. Credit goes to African pioneers of social work indigenization such as Osei-Hwedie, Roderick Mupedziswa, Mel Grey and Simon Kang'ethe, who have used especially the South African context to show how the western-centric inherited curriculum has ostensibly failed to realise significant development [6, 23, 24]. This is to make it more responsive to the local needs. Although the benefits of this advocacy are taking too long to be adequately achieved, the endeavour is welcome and may turn around the management and dividend of social work interventions soon. In short, the pioneers of indigenization have been drumming up a viable cultural path to service delivery [25].

Social work researchers in South Africa need to be appreciated for their role in advocating for interventions to surmount the quagmire of coronavirus. A simple search in the research google engines will reveal that some social workers have authored articles directing how institutions of higher learning need to respond to the disease in South Africa, reported what is happening in these institutions as well as recommended the role of social service professions such as the social workers in the battle against coronavirus [15, 26]. Some social work researchers have also researched the state of the stigma associated with the disease [27]. This heralds their increased competitiveness in the domain of research, which has perpetually been credited to other professions such as sociology and psychology before the acknowledgement of the role of social work in research development [23].

Further, an important research predisposition regards the care of the clients of coronavirus by family caregivers. Some researchers have called for the application of ubuntu to do caregiving [28]. If societies were to apply ubuntu in caregiving, this means they will display trust, love, sharing, mutuality and reciprocity to the caregiving process. This follows the African philosophies linked to ubuntu of being there for one another, offering a supporting hand to one who is falling and a shoulder to one who is crying [29].
