Social work is a profession that is dedicated to the pursuit of social justice and the well-being of oppressed and marginalized individuals and communities. However there are many challenges that social workers face as a result of trying to conduct their work and bring improvement to the lives of others.

Fouwzia Ryklief, a retired social worker, who retired little over two months ago says that she faced many challenges in her decades long career as a social worker trying to bring positive changes to the community that she serves.

Social workers often divide their time between working one-on-one with families and individuals and finding a place for clients in the community.

“One of the challenges were trying to make changes to a family situation,” Ryklief explained.

“When a family is seeking assistance there is a long history that has lead up to that problem and a few sessions is not going to solve it.”

Social workers find themselves trying to help solve problems in the home, but due to factors such as drug and alcohol abuse, trying to help the entire family may be a difficult problem to solve.

“Furthermore, other contributing factors involved in making matters worse is structural factors like the situation in society and the lack of jobs for people as well as the lack of housing available for people,” Ryklief added.

The responsibility of a social worker is so diverse that they have to take on multiple roles with each case that they handle. Within the family structure social workers have to deal with core family issues and with the presence of children it makes the situation even more complicated.

“Other issues that social workers still struggle with today is the level of violence in communities,” Ryklief went further.

This is evident by gang violence being attributed to the rising domestic violence in home (as referenced to a previous article, women abuse often increases as gang violence worsens). With the continued gang violence plaguing areas around the Cape Peninsula it makes it difficult for social workers to move forward with their cases as they might put their own lives in danger.

Another issue that is prevalent is for social work to be recognised as a true profession

“Social work as a profession has been placed at the bottom of the list, social work is amongst the most poorly paid professionals and yet social workers have to study for four years at university,” Ryklief continued.

People may have the misconception that social work is equivalent to charity work, but what they do not know is that it needs a vast amount of training and an acquired set of skill and expertise to be dealing with people and the difficult situation that they find themselves in.

“Training and skills really need to be recognised and social workers need to be properly acknowledged and rewarded for their contribution in aiding to alleviate problems in communities,” Ryklief said.

Becoming a social worker is not an easy task, and one must really have a passion for working with people and the ability to deal with difficult situations. VOC (Umarah Hartley)