EDITORIAL

Editorial

Prof. Sulina Green

Department of Social Work, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The articles presented in his issue of Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk include, on the one hand, the response of social work to trauma experienced by adults, and on the other hand, the support that social work offers to vulnerable children.

The first four articles offer insights into challenges related to trauma experienced by women, officials, spouses of emergency service personnel, and survivors of brain injuries. The first article describes how a group work approach was developed and implemented to provide psychosocial and spiritual support to women in bereaved and traumatised indigent communities. Likewise, the second article focuses on the development of a psychosocial group work programme to prevent the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder among police officials. The third article explores the secondary trauma experienced by the spouses of medical emergency staff personnel. The fourth article emphasises the need to offer brain injury survivors and their families opportunities for sheltered employment.

The need of vulnerable children for social work intervention is addressed in the next three articles. One article describes the experiences of teenagers engaged in sexual activities on school grounds and their need for social work intervention. Another article proposes a support strategy for boys sexually abused in their middle childhood, who have been placed in a clinical school. The third article reports on the challenges experienced by social welfare officers in the rehabilitation of child offenders in Zambia.

The last article in the issue recommends that the Namibian government should formalise the adoption of a developmental social welfare policy in order to create an enabling environment for social work to promote social and economic equality.