Although, the aim of social work is to empower and liberate people so as to enhance their wellbeing, its reliance on the traditional residual and institutional approaches to service delivery has heavily been criticised, as individuals are perceived as sick and pathological. These social intervention approaches lack the necessary economic linkages, and warranted an alternative; called social development approach or developmental social work (‘new outfit’). This shift in paradigm was ushered into South Africa through the White Paper for Social Welfare (1997) as a guiding framework for the transformation of the welfare system. Although the developmental approach is a common concept, the paper questions social workers’ proper grasp of it; as practitioners and educators battle with it. It is argued that social work education through the SAQA 27 exit level outcomes has not sufficiently covered the length and breadth of social development, resulting in less grooming of students on the approach. More importantly, it is a fact that social workers, students and educators have been left to be self-groomed through reading the available literature on social development. In the mist of this, the implementation of the approach as envisioned by the White Paper is still wobbling. In conclusion, it is noted that embracing developmental social work (‘new outfit”) with its many limitations minus good grooming is a somewhat faulty equation in South Africa.

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