Some basic concepts and issues in community planning

Abstract

THE AIM OF THIS INTRODUCTORY LECTURE is to outline some basic concepts and issues in community planning, as part of your on-campus orientation to the winter field practice experience. We want to be sure that you have adequate opportunity to connect the theory and practice of social casework, in which all students concentrate at Smith, with the wider professional context of social work and social welfare practice in the community-at-large. We want you to be a keen observer, and, to the extent possible, a participant in the exciting social change activities currently going on in every community where we have Smith field placements. With these purposes in mind, we hope that the concepts we are about to discuss will provide a lens through which you can view and study such key social programs as the attack on poverty; community mental health planning, both locally and regionally; projects concerned with the prevention and control of delinquency; urban renewal efforts; new approaches to income-maintenance aimed at strengthening public assistance; and other types of problem-solving activities which endeavor to enhance community-wide social functioning. Of great help in concentrating the attention of the local community on these problems has been such recent federal action as the Economic Opportunity Act, federal community mental health legislation concerning mental illness and mental retardation, the activity of the President's Committee on Delinquency, and the work of the Urban Renewal Administration. Specifically, we shall identify the following areas which are related to the problems and processes of community planning: