22 Nov 2018

The University of Botswana (UB) is revising and improving its social work programme to make it more responsive to current challenges and align it to specific needs of the nation.

In an interview, UB senior lecturer, Ms Poloko Ntshwarang said the decision was influenced by the outcomes and recommendations from stakeholders consultative meetings.

“From the meetings we realised that our training programme was too general and outdated. We live in a changing global village so the training programme needed to be revised to address the current needs of people and that of the country,” Ms Ntshwarang explained.

She said the revision of the training programme was also prompted by the realisation that social workers practiced in various or different disciplines of the economy, and that it needed to be categorised into areas of specialties.

“We recently completed drafting the course outline. The course content and structure are informed by research. It is tailor-made to respond to identified specific needs of the people and the country’s priority development areas. We further ensured that it is compliant with the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) requirements and standards,” she said.

Ms Ntshwarang said the programme was scheduled to be rolled out soon.

She noted that the university continuously engaged in research which also revealed that the training programme needed to be aligned to the country’s priority developmental agenda as well as the Sustainable Development Goals.

She said the university was not constrained to academics only, noting that they also provided community service, research and lecture duties.

Describing the programme content, Ms Ntshwarang noted that community development was one of the country’s priority areas of development and a method of social work.

“We wanted to re-emphasise social development and equip social workers with skills, knowledge and courage to reclaim their position in the community development space. Therefore, one of the priority areas is social policy and community development,” she said.

She said the programme was also looking to address emerging challenges that the country was grappling with such as alcohol and substance abuse and mental illnesses. She revealed that another area of specialty was mental health and substance abuse.

She said the third stream or area of specialty was on issues of children, youth and families.

“Issues of psycho-social support in children will no longer be done as a small component or module of training. They will be done in-depth. We believe that family is a unit for socialisation and very important in developing or grooming children with foresight and good wel-being,” stated Ms Ntshwarang.

She highlighted the significance of social research, noting that it was another form of social work that needed to be explored.

She said social research helped in identifying existing challenges and developing suitable responsive programmes, interventions and policies.

Ms Ntshwarang underscored that an improved social work training programme would result in enhanced service delivery from social workers and harness the much needed development in people’s lives, that of the country and the world. ENDS