Browsing by Author "September, Uwarren"

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    Autoethnographic view of South African social work educators during the Covid-19 pandemic : highlighting social (in)justice
    (Department of Social Work, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, 2021-10) Perumal, Nevashnee; Pillay, Roshini; Zimba, Zibonele France; Sithole, Mbongeni; Van der Westhuizen, Marichen; Khosa, Priscalia; Nomngcoyiya, Thanduxolo; Mokone, Malebo; September, Uwarren
    COVID-19 has exposed the inequalities and polarisation of South African communities and institutions of higher learning on the continuum of privilege. As nine social work educators, we share our reflections on how we traversed the higher education space during the beginning of the pandemic, using an autoethnography lens, with the pedagogy of discomfort and critical social work theory as the threads in the complex tapestry of our stories. We describe our orientations as social work educators, the successes, challenges, and recommendations on reimagining and reframing learning and teaching in relation to student-institutional relationships, boundaries and support.
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    Social work services to families caring for adult relatives with a mental illness
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) September, Uwarren; Strydom, Marianne; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Social Work.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: When families take care of a relative with a mental illness, it can cause tremendous stress to the family and the patient. Rendering social work services to such families would relieve stress and contribute to everyone’s quality of life. Globally, about one in four families has a relative with a mental illness, and with limited access to and limited resources, families must often look after and care for such relatives. Families must thus contend with multiple sources of stress, including stress relating to their relative's mental illness, symptoms and behaviours, and societal stigmatisation. If support services to families caring for adult relatives with a mental illness are limited or unavailable, families and their relatives with mental illness, suffer. Unfortunately, this is the situation in South Africa where the National Mental Health Policy Framework and Strategic Plan (Department of Health, 2012) and the Mental Health Care Act 17 of 2002, are in support of deinstitutionalising mental health patients. This means that patients should be discharged from mental institutions as soon as reasonably possible to be treated in their communities. Nationally, however, South Africa’s existing mental health frameworks are confronted by numerous challenges, such as the exchange of care of patients from institutions to community-based care, political contemplations in developing policy, stigmatisation of people with mental health issues, and a lack of community-based services. These challenges all directly impact families taking care of a relative with mental illness. Due to an unrelenting increase in people experiencing mental illnesses and the number of families reporting such problems, the demand for and necessity of rendering social work services to families taking care of an adult relative with a mental illness have been emphasised. Apart from the increasing demand for rendering direct social work services to families who take care of people with mental illness, there is also a lack of, or poor and rarely available community-based social work services to families of mentally ill relatives. Amid the drive for deinstitutionalisation and the subsequent focus on community-based mental health services in South Africa, there is insufficient empirical research regarding social work services rendered to families caring for a relative with a mental illness. Existing research does not specify social work services to families caring for a relative with a mental illness but focus mostly on interventions for the mentally ill individual.