​Last week Thursday and Friday, 16-17 November 2023, the Gauteng Department of Social Development (GDSD) hosted a two-day quality assurance, compliance and professional support training for Social Workers and Social Auxiliary Workers in Protea Glen service point.
Quality assurance training is done to establish and maintain set requirements for delivering or rendering services in the public sector. It is also meant to increase public confidence when it comes to services rendered by government departments . Furthermore, it seeks to improve the credibility of departments by being efficient in their processes.
According to an official from Supatsela, Tebogo Morakane, the training was for the Department to provide the generic intervention process (GIP) tools as aligned to the Supatsela system, and also to give the Social Workers and Social Auxiliary Workers information on the correct processes and tools to use when performing their duties, as a way of going back to the basics and to ensure implementation of the correct casework, group work and community work tools.
The generic intervention process tools are standardized administrative practice across the sector to improve information management processes, improve reporting on core services rendered, and provide guidance on the selection of appropriate tools to be utilized.
Morokane said the Social Workers must know what the purpose of different forms is, for example screening registry is completed by Social Auxiliary work upon the arrival of the client and it is submitted weekly for reporting purposes. Individual registry is completed daily by Social Workers, and it is submitted weekly to update central case registry which helps Social Workers manage and track their cases.
The first day of training program was mainly focused on understanding generic interventions tools, challenges faced when performing duties, unpacking the generic interventions processes, management of service delivery, screening process, intake process, assessment intervention and planning, evaluation and termination, and lastly, case how chart.
The second day was focused on issues such as community profiling, group work tools, objectives in the beginning stage, involving group members, group evaluation, monitoring and demonstration on application of GIP tools on system.
The SACSSP was present in the training to present the code of ethics for Social Workers and Social Auxiliary Workers and give a platform to the social services professionals to raise their concerns and get more relevant information from the council.