Challenges Faced by Social Workers in Rendering Family Reunification Services in South Africa: A Rights-Based Perspective

Placing children in alternative care serves to safeguard their well-being while social workers work to resolve the issues that necessitated their removal from the home. Despite this intention, social workers face numerous difficulties when implementing family reunification services. This article explores the challenges encountered by social workers in South Africa in delivering these services. The study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design and involved social workers employed at five child protection organisations across the country. Data were gathered through 15 qualitative interviews and 127 completed questionnaires. Thematic analysis, guided by Creswell’s framework, was used to interpret the qualitative data, while quantitative data were processed using a statistical software package for social sciences (SPSS) version 23. The findings reveal a range of institutional, infrastructural, and human resource constraints that hinder effective service delivery. Social workers also reported difficulties arising from uncooperative biological parents and strained relationships between biological and foster parents, often marked by mistrust, suspicion, and hostility. At times, tensions also emerged between biological parents and social workers themselves. The study concludes that recognising these challenges creates an opportunity to address them more effectively. It recommends the development of a rights-based family reunification service model to guide and support social workers in providing timely and effective reunification interventions.