**4. Conclusion and social work implications**

Despite the importance of the social work profession occupying a very important place and space among social service professions in the western world, it is paradoxical that in many African countries, it suffers obscurity, and recognition deficit especially in the face of other social service professions such as psychology, making its interventions paltry effective. However, perhaps South Africa is increasingly becoming different because social work operatives are increasingly glorified with social work being depended on to help tackle and address a conglomeration of social challenges that bedevil the country. The profession manifests governmental recognition in that the country has 16 schools of social work among the 26 national universities; plus, two other schools housed by two other non-university institutions of higher learning. Opportunely, social workers across the breadth of South Africa have continually occupied different professional offices that facilitate service delivery. Managed by the Department of Social Development, social workers manage the allocation, implementation and distribution of various social welfare grants that inter alia includes, child welfare grants, foster care grants, old-age pensions, disability grants, etc. This researcher believes that these grants are disbursed with some degree of fairness making the country one of the biggest welfare countries in the world. This makes the social work profession a bridge and an implementer for the poverty alleviation process. With the country experiencing one of the highest inequalities in the world and with more than 34 million people relying on welfare grants as the only source of income, then social work needs commendation for facilitating the implementation of these welfare grants. The profession also needs to be recognised for its versatility, meaning that social workers can handle a repertoire of tasks bedevilling society.

The engagement of social work researchers in many important domains in South Africa, such as gender-based violence, xenophobia, crime and coronavirus, and the environment surrounding it has made social work rise in rank to compete favourably

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

with other perennially research-oriented professions such as psychology and sociology. Indeed, social workers are slowly becoming self-contained and are increasingly engaging in cutting-edge research about the challenges bedevilling the society. Perhaps more research credit and recognition go to social work researchers in the South African region who are marshalling effort and energy to indigenize the social work curriculum. This is to make it more responsive to the needs of the citizens.

While the above constitutes the prospects or positive contribution to social work, the profession suffers immense pitfalls or faces a confounding environment. It has been stifled and thwarted by a colonially loaded curriculum that was crafted to take care of the environment different from the African setting. This could explain the fact that most social workers upon graduating from the schools of social work are not able to bring the requisite change that guarantees effective social and community development. This is because the social work curriculum it inherited is remedial and curative as opposed to being developmental. The presence of perennial poverty among the South African communities, despite the mammoth functionalities of the social workers, proves that, indeed, social work is not productive enough to ensure the country achieves a turn -around developmental trajectory.

Another pitfall or confounding environment is that social work has had the challenge of working with communities whose metaphysical belief systems make them undermine the tenets of social and community development. With 80% of the South African societies believing in traditional healers and their practices, alongside other traditional practitioners such as the spiritualists, herbalists, witch doctors and wizards, these practitioners have ensured their adherents believe in their metaphysics and practices, and not what the forces of social and community development stand for. This has been serious in the battle against HIV/AIDS, where some traditional practitioners have not hesitated to make prescriptions for the disease instead of owning the fact that their trade and skills levels cannot subdue HIV/AIDS. This is worrying in South Africa where HIV/AIDS continues to consume a lion's share of the health budget through the cost of ARVS. Further, these metaphysical belief systems have given rise to an environment rife with a mythical environment that misconstrues the basic facts of a phenomenon of social and community development concern. While HIV/AIDS suffered a catastrophe of myths, coronavirus has not been spared. This has detracted the path of knowing the disease's aetiology and its epidemiology.

Conclusively, the country needs to strengthen the process of indigenizing the curriculum which will mean changing it to reflect and respond to its socio-cultural and geographical milieu. This will be a major milestone in social work interventions in the country.
