The challenges faced by social workers working in HIV/AIDS home-based care

Abstract

The role of social workers in home-based care services for people living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is of particular significance. Social workers address various problems faced by people living with the HIV (PLWHIV) and their families. They render various support services to caregivers for coping with psychosocial challenges associated with caring for PLWHIV by among other things, and liaising with stakeholders for the benefit of patients. Despite this contribution, the challenges and coping strategies experienced by social workers who are working under the armpit of home-based care for PLWHIV have not been researched adequately. The aim was to develop an insight into the role played by social workers who are working with PLWHIV in HBC organisations, the challenges that they face in executing their roles, the strategies that they adopt in managing these challenges and their suggestions on how to better address their challenges. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to identify and recruit a total of twelve social workers to participate in individual semi-structured face-to-face interviews by answering various questions around the challenges that they face in working with PLWHIV through an HBC organisation, the strategies that they use in coping with these challenges and the suggestions on how their challenges could be addressed. The interviews were analysed according to Tesch’s eight steps of qualitative data analysis and verified according to Guba and Lincoln’s model. The study findings revealed that in executing their various roles through the home-based care for PLWHIV, caregivers experience various challenges from within their respective HBC organisations and when dealing directly with clients who are diagnosed with HIV. The study also reveals that various strategies such as exercising and spending time with families, are adopted as some of the strategies adopted by social workers in managing their challenges. Some suggestions put forward by the participants on how to address these challenges, are that the government provide more funding for HBC programmes. A conclusion reached through this study is that it was a necessary study and it did achieve the overall aim and its related objectives. Among the recommendations proposed is the need to recruit more social workers in this field and to conduct further research which include the views of PLWHIV.