A survey of community social work agencies in greater Cape Town

Bibliography: pages 198-202.A survey of sixteen community social work agencies in Greater Cape Town was conducted from December 1981 to June 1982. Community social work agencies were defined as voluntary associations that currently employed workers to practise the method of community work and whose community work could be classified as within the field of social work. The goal of the survey was to gather and document knowledge about the practise of community social work and to identify "patterns of occurrence" in the nature of the community work practised by the agencies and the support systems provided by the agencies for the community workers. Using a list of quaesita derived from her experience and knowledge of the field, from previous studies, and from community work theory, the researcher collected data by indirect observation. She also employed observation to gather data from agency constitutions and annual reports. Her principal technique for indirect observation was to secure human testimony by structured interviews. The most senior staff member involved in community work in each agency was interviewed. The data collected were edited, classified, coded, and tabulated in simple frequency distributions and selected bi-variate tables. These were used to reconstruct an Idealtypus of a community social work agency, described in the final chapter. Detailed conclusions regarding the characteristics of the ideal-type agency thus constructed referred respectively to the agency itself, the community work performed by it, the community workers performing the community work, and the support systems available to them. Taken together these conclusions depict a very active and varied pattern of community work being conducted by community social work agencies in Greater Cape Town. This community work is mainly a recent revival and it is still not a major field of practice, but it is ready for training and development