A COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKERS AND EDUCATORS: A VEHICLE TO ADDRESS THE SOCIAL CONTEXTS OF LEARNERS AND QUALITY OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

Education is a core indicator of a society’s well-being. Globally, it is an established practice to include school social work into the education system. In South Africa, however, it is rarely integrated into the education system. This is a conceptual paper focusing on the social context of school-going children, reflecting on the existing well thought-through frameworks of psychosocial support and care and integrated service delivery of the South African Departments of Education and Social Development, and also questioning why collaboration between the Departments to implement the frameworks in the school environment appears to be a complicated and slow process.