Community Work with Immigrants

Abstract

SUMMARY The paper emerges from community work with an immigrant organization in a govern ment-sponsored Community Development Project over a two-year period. It discusses the various approaches to working with immigrants, including that of the local Com munity Relations Council, reports an action research survey of immigrant need, and in particular assesses the 'non-directive' community development approach to working with an immigrant organization. The implications of this study are discussed in relation to the general potential of community work with immigrants. There has recently been a growth of interest in the potential contribution of community work to the field of race relations in this country (Patterson),1 but there are few studies of what this approach is likely to achieve in practice. The account given in this paper emerges from the work of research workers attached to a government-sponsored Community Development Project. The Community Development Project programme was initiated by the government in 1969, and gradually extended its scope to cover twelve local area projects. The programme represents an attempt to find out how far the social needs experienced by people in a local community can be better understood and resolved through closer co-ordination of all agencies in the social welfare field, together with the aspirations and efforts of local people themselves. It is assumed that an exploratory approach, using social science methods of inquiry and evaluation as a built-in support for practice, constitutes a useful addition to more traditional ways of tackling problems of social welfare. Once an area is selected, the procedure has been for an action team to be appointed to the local authority's staff and a complementary research team formed from within a university or polytechnic. There is therefore a specialist and partly independent research team to assist, monitor and evaluate com munity work initiatives. Part of the work of one local Community Development Project affords a modest example of the efforts to combine