Social Work Practice with Communities

1. Social Work Practice with Communities What Is Community Organization?

2. Community Organization • Working with the community requires the generalist practitioner to be able to assess community functioning and design specific intervention techniques. • Community organization has been recognized for many years as one of the main methods of social work. • CSWE, issued in l962 included community organization, along with casework and group work, as the three major methods of social work.

3. Community Organization • Kettner, Daley, and Nichols define community organization in the context of a planned change model. • The three components of their model include the change process, arenas for practice, and types of interventive effort anticipated. • In community organization work the client is the community. • The two major arenas for community organization practice are community organizations and the community itself.

4. Beginnings of Community Social Work • The first attempts to coordinate community activities and actions stemmed from the London Charity Organization Society which tried to eliminate duplication and fraud in relief administration. • In 1909 in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, the first community welfare councils in the United States were established. • They were called Councils of Social Agencies.

5. Beginnings of Community Social Work • These councils generally focus on three main areas: • Health • Welfare • Recreation * The development of federated financial drives was also an important aspect of community social work.

6. Beginnings of Community Social Work • In 1887 the first federated drive in the United States originated under the auspices of the Associated Charities in Denver. • In l99l there were approximately 2,100 United Way Campaigns in the United States and they collected $3.3 billion. • About 32 million people, or about one out of every three persons employed in the United States, gave through their United Way.

7. Community Social Work Processes • The purpose of research in community organization is to define what community realities are and what to the facts do show. • Planning is purposeful formulation of future action and ways of procedure. • Coordination is the process of working together to avoid unnecessary duplication, effort and conflict.

8. Community Social Work Processes • Organization is the process of establishing a structure to accomplish certain goals. • A formal organization usually gives substance to a movement. • Financing is the process of collecting, budgeting, and spending funds in relation to community needs and resources. • Social work administration can be defined as the process of transforming social policy into social services.

9. Community Social Work Processes • Committee operation is the essence of social work community practice. • For adequate committee operation there need to be adequate representation for all of the groups that may be interested and involved in relation to a particular project. • One of the significant developments in community social work has been the increasing emphasis on client advocacy. • Examples of social action can be seen in the Civil Rights Movement, the Grey Panthers, and the National Association for the Mentally Ill.

10. Roles of the Community Organizer • Rubin and Rubin have defined four key roles in community organization as follows: • Organizers as teacher • Organizers as catalysts • Organizers as facilitators • A linking role * The community organizers should have the ability to relate to people, to analyze problems, to locate resources, to see potential for change, and to be able to create effective structures for problem solving.

11. Roles of the Community Organizer • The advocacy and social action elements of community social work practice focus on empowering individuals and communities. • Much of community organization is done to change systems, and many times the system resists change. • Social workers should have good technical skills and be able to get along well with people.