Thematic Content Analysis of the Roles of Social Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic in South Africa

Abstract

Social workers were expected to play a role during the COVID-19 pandemic despite the uniqueness and newness of the pandemic. It is from this background that the researcher developed a hunch to analyse the roles of social workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. This study adopted the non-empirical research method wherein existing literature was reviewed. The researcher reviewed and analysed documents on the social workers roles from search engines such as EBSCOhost, google scholar and ProQuest. The inductive Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) was used to analyse the collected data.  Finding of this study revealed that social workers played important roles of being educators, case managers, brokers and counsellors wherein some of their key responsibilities was to educate individuals, families and communities and link them with resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations are also provided in this study.