Summary

The White Paper for Social Welfare adopted by Parliament in 1997 provided a policy framework to shift social welfare from meeting the needs of a small minority to a social development perspective. This policy change has required the complete overhaul of th e current welfare system with far-reaching implications for human and financial resources policy and legislative reform in line with the new constitution and the Bill of Rights changes in institutional arrangements and trade-offs between different sectors and interests in society. In the past social work education was not developmentally orientated and tended to borrow uncritically from North American and European theory and practice. There was a lack of South African and African literature in the field of welfare and development. In addition to the need for the renewal of social work education in South Africa, there was also a need for the re-orientation of existing social workers to implement new welfare thinking and to app r a ise theory and practice critically.