Challenges experienced by social workers responsible for rehabilitation and social reintegration of parolees within the Department of Correctional Services: guidelines for social work support services

Abstract

The provision of social work services to parolees is crucial for their rehabilitation and successful reintegration back into the community. Different stakeholders should play a role to ensure that parolees are successfully reintegrated back into their community where they originated. This study employed a qualitative approach to explore the challenges facing social workers responsible for the rehabilitation and reintegration of parolees within the Department of Correctional Services and to develop guidelines for social work support services. A qualitative study using the phenomenological, exploratory, descriptive and contextual designs was undertaken. Purposive sampling was used to select 19 participants from three groups, namely social workers, social work supervisors and heads of community corrections. Data was collected through individual, face-to-face and telephone semi structured interviews undertaken in Gauteng Region and analysed according to the eight steps of data analysis proposed by Tesch (cited in Creswell 2018:158-162). Lincoln and Guba’s principles of trustworthiness were employed in the verification of the data. The ethical principles of informed consent, harm to participants, anonymity and confidentiality, management of information and debriefing of participants were observed. This study draws from the ecological systems theory and the social conflict theory. The goals of the study were to develop an in-depth understanding of the challenges faced by social workers responsible for the rehabilitation and reintegration of parolees as well as to provide guidelines for social work support services focusing on rehabilitation and reintegration of parolees. The findings suggest that social workers are working in stressful conditions due to lack of resources in the community. Furthermore, social workers were not trained on community corrections systems and, as a result, they were unable to violate offenders who are not complying with the parole conditions. Participants also expressed that they found it difficult to work in isolation as there is no teamwork at community corrections. Suggestions of participants on how to improve services at community corrections included appointment of more social workers at community corrections to deal with the existing caseload.