Community Work Practice Research Articles

Social work community practice from a government discourse perspective: Motives for youth volunteers in controlling COVID-19 in Rwanda

During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries were in emergencies to contain the envisioned danger. Rwanda was no exception. Among strategies adopted by the country to control the pandemic were community interventions by youth volunteers. Using social movement and self-determination theories, the paper investigated the policy perspective of the motives for the voluntary engagement of these youths in controlling the pandemic so that these motives could be documented for future emergencies. A qualitative approach was adopted to explore what motivated these youths by analysing government discourses, where data were collected from six government policy documents. The content analysis was done after grouping the data into two categories and subcategories using MAXQDA 22, a qualitative data analysis software, for data mapping and visualization. The results indicate that youth volunteers have been mainly motivated by institutional-level motives, whereby government leadership mobilisation and coordination had a high occurrence, and under the individual-level motives category, civic-mindedness behaviour occurred high. The paper argues that conducive policies are a key motivation for social work community practices. Social workers should advocate for conducive policies to increase the productivity of voluntary activities. Another study involving talking to youth volunteers may complement the current findings.

One Piece at a Time: Building Community and a Mosaic Mural

This phenomenological study explored the experiences of community members who worked with a social work community practice class to create a participatory mosaic mural in an ethnically diverse and rapidly gentrifying area of a small city in New England. Community members in this project included people working in the community at agencies and schools, artists with studios in the neighborhood, residents, and business owners. Seven community members participated in the study and completed hour-long semi-structured interviews. Analysis revealed three primary themes: (1) artist and community match, (2) what it takes to make it happen, and (3) mural legacy. This paper contributes to literature investigating the value of participatory art projects as a strategy to build collaboration and connectedness utilizing critical service learning and creative placemaking approaches.

Ours! Activist-driven community work: the story of Govanhill Baths – an interview with Fatima Uygun

Fatima Uygun works with the Govanhill Baths Community Trust, a Glasgow-based organisation that has been at the heart of some of the most effective community campaigns in Scotland over more than two decades. On behalf of Critical and Radical Social Work, Iain Ferguson interviewed Fatima about the trust’s activities and what she sees as the essence of good community work practice.

The changing face of community work: from radicalism to networking. A European perspective

ABSTRACT Applied theories in social work are social constructs that evolve according to cultural, political and social trends. The history of community work in Europe after the Second World War provides an example of a family of practices that is constantly evolving, in terms of its integration into social work, its methods, and the political project that underpins it. While the development of broad-based and conscientising approaches were challenged by neo-liberalism from the 1980s on, community work practice is currently undergoing a revival based on community building and person-centred methods, under the influence of the new public management. This paper is based on a doctoral research conducted in six European countries, examining the relationship between social work and community work, and the various forms of community work across Europe.

Forming The Task-Oriented Team for Flagship Plan: The Case of Changhua Community Empowerment Center for the Flagship Plan of the Ministry of Health and Welfare

「福利社區化旗艦型計畫」乃藉由「大手牽小手」及「共同學習」的方式培力新興或起步社區，計畫理念固然良好，但執行上仍有諸多挑戰與困難。本文以彰化縣社區資源中心長期輔導彰化縣優等社區提案申請（及執行）旗艦計畫之作法，進行案例介紹與分析。本中心所採取的主要作法包括：前置作業明確—輔導針對有意願提案之社區組成成長團隊，且各社區以固定團隊組成；以社區成長學習為計畫主軸；進行系統性及結構性計畫時程以推動運作計畫。上開作法之執行及持續優化，確形成社區共同學習成長團隊，產生優質的大型團隊。作者期待實務經驗的努力成長，可為專業性社區工作實務方法提供專業知識之累積，及提供各社區培力中心及地方政府實務推動之參佐。The object of ＂Welfare Community-based Flagship Plan＂ is empowering the new community association through the methods of ＂hand-by-hand＂ and ＂learning together＂. Due to the consensus of the plan among different communities and community capacity conditions, the good idea of ＂Flagship Plan＂ face many challenges and difficulties in its implementation. This article introduces the successful empowering case of Changhua County Community Resource Center in the Flagship Plans in Changhua County. The main methods adopted by the Center include organization community leaders as task-oriented team for their Flagship Plan, guiding the team as a growth group for mutual learning with fixed communities' cadres, forming mutual learning as the main axis of their plan, conducting systematic discussions through structured schedules. Based on the practical experience, the authors look forward to the growth of practical experience which can provide the accumulation of professional knowledge for professional community work practice methods.

Social-work students’ perspectives on their learning process following the implementation of community based participatory research in a community practice course

ABSTRACT This paper presents the phenomenological perspective of social work students on their learning process following the implementation of community based participatory research (CBPR) in the context of a social work community practice course. CBPR was implemented in the framework of a partnership between the communities of the Gaza Envelope Region in southern Israel, and the school of social work at the college in the region. Throughout the academic year students engaged in data collection and participated in steering committees that focused on building a regional vision for the communities. At the end of the year stduents were asked to write reflexive essays about their learning experience. Study findings, grounded in a narrative content analysis of 83 reflexive student essays, point to four narratives that characterized their learning: 1) being part of a real-life community intervention process; 2) students-inspired by community residents: the power of hope; 3) the meaning of community; and 4) future professional identity: the desire to engage in community practice. Findings are discussed in light of theories of experiential and transformative learning, community narratives, and professional identity, with reference to the fields of social work community practice education.

Place-making: Toward a place-aware community practice agenda

AbstractSince its very inception, the field of social work has acknowledged the importance of place in shaping communal identity, construing shared meanings and generating collective actions. Nevertheless, the analytical framework of place-making, which enjoys growing interest in other disciplines, has little impact on social work and its incorporation into social work community practice is still embryonic. The place-making perspective is particularly relevant to the multiple challenges faced by community practice in the twenty-first century. This qualitative study aims to encourage the inclusion of place-making analytical perspective in community practice research by examining community practitioners’ engagement in place-making processes within the complex context of Israeli Jewish–Arab mixed cities. Based on semi-structured interviews with thirty community practitioners in the public services, the findings reveal that participants were highly engaged in four main interrelated aspects of place-making: shaping the ethnocultural meanings of place, managing the meaning of space in power relations, re-constructing the conflicted meaning of space and framing the history of place. The study illustrates the usefulness of the place-making analytical framework in community practice, especially in the context of increasing contested and divided urban realities.

Banking on community: The use of time banking as an innovative community practice teaching strategy

ABSTRACT This article explores the use of a classroom-based, experiential time banking project as an innovative community practice teaching strategy. It presents a preliminary, qualitative evaluation of a seven-week, time banking project among 40 students enrolled in a Master of Social Work community practice course, spanning two academic years. Findings highlight challenges (e.g., lack of time) and benefits (e.g., building a sense of community) associated with the model specifically, as well as the ways in which participation expanded understandings of and appreciation for the power and potential of community practice more generally. Recommendations for future teaching and research applications are offered.

Engaging Community Members in Providing Support for the Dying and the Bereaved: Activities in Social Work Community Practice

In this practice note, the authors describe three main community engagement strategies around empathy in times of suffering: (1) raising public awareness about the value of community support in times of grief with the creation of a neighborhood-based public campaign; (2) providing educational, skill-building workshops to instill confidence and communication skills among lay people in community, business, and medical settings that want to connect with people they know experiencing a personal difficulty; and (3) publishing a lighthearted, illustrated trade book and website/blog to make a difficult topic palatable and engaging to a broad audience. Activities were housed in a fiscally sponsored nonprofit the authors founded in 2014 called Help Each Other Out.

Hubris, revelations and creative pedagogy: transformation, dialogue and modelling ‘professional love’ with LEGO®

ABSTRACTThe article demonstrates a successful approach to providing Youth and Community Work students in higher education (HE) with a learning experience that embraces the transformative agenda of their chosen profession. It adds to our understanding of the opportunities and limitations in crafting a learning environment and embedding a discursive pedagogy that draws on the creativity of both the lecturer and students. Exploring different iterations of reflective sessions, it highlights how creative approaches can help students overcome barriers to their engagement with a particularly complex concept, namely, the transformational capacity of ‘professional love’ within Youth and Community Work practice. The evaluation of these sessions generates broadly positive results, suggesting that creative methods are appropriate for addressing complex issues in the HE classroom. However, it also details how this approach proved profoundly upsetting for some participants, suggesting it should not be seen as a one-size-fits-all solution to overcoming barriers in teaching and learning.

Critical Reflexivity beyond the Classroom: Social Work Students' Perspectives of Communities in Kwazulu-Natal

Social work students are expected to adopt a critical reflexive approach in dealing with the development challenges facing communities in contemporary South Africa. As an epistemological position that merges postmodernist thinking with the radical humanist goals of structural social work theory, the concept of critical reflexivity is often conflated with critical reflective competencies in the application of learning. Using qualitative methodology, the authors present 74 students’ experiences of profiling communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Three themes emerged from the data distilled through profile reports and interviews: reflexivity and conceptualising community in practice, reflexivity in community profiling, and reflexivity and community needs. The authors conclude that a critically reflexive stance is fundamental for students to adopt in community work practice, and to recognise how their own social and cultural influences contribute to the process of knowledge creation and the promotion of social justice and human rights in communities.

Community Work Research through Co-Operative Inquiry in Timor-Leste, Australia and Peru: Insights into Process

Co-operative inquiry is an under-explored method in community-based research. Its democratic approach involves a group of “co-researchers” collaboratively inquiring into a mutually-agreed research topic through systematic cycles of reflection and action. This article shares the process, outcomes, and methodological reflections of three co-operative inquiries that were conducted as part of an international study regarding love in community work. Groups of up to 10 community workers in rural villages in Timor-Leste, Australia, and Peru engaged in co-operative inquiry to collaboratively develop new knowledge to inform practice. The article analyses data regarding co-inquirer experiences of the methodology, and identifies the strengths and challenges of the co-operative inquiry method to support the collective generation of new knowledge. The article concludes that co-operative inquiry involves shared power, participation, action, and contextual reflexivity, and is a useful method for community workers to collaboratively develop innovative approaches to community work practice through cycles of reflection and action.

A co-operative inquiry about love using narrative, performative and visual methods

Participatory researchers advocate using presentational arts-based methods to collectively inquire into a social phenomenon. In a co-operative inquiry in an Australian rural community, ten community workers inquired into the ‘love ethic’ in their community work practice using narrative, performative and visual methods to gather, analyse and interpret data within cycles of reflection and action. Group members collectively and democratically chose to use presentational inquiry tools such as storytelling, dialogical performance, gift-giving, drawing and other non-traditional approaches to explore the topic and generate collaborative knowledge. These methods were engaging and empowering, and supported group members to develop a love-based framework of community practice. The group’s final collective drawing depicts the roots, trunk, fruit and saplings of a tree representing the values, process, outcomes and cyclical nature of the love ethic in community work.

The application of social media in social work community practice

Advocacy is a core part of social work practice. While social media platforms have grown in popularity in online campaigns, there is little evidence of how social workers can use social media when working with community groups. In this article, we provide an exemplar of an innovative advocacy practice with social media involving community members who created participatory videos as part of a research study, and subsequently integrated the videos into a larger human rights advocacy campaign. The case highlights three forms of social media engagement: platform integration, call-to-action, and blending offline and online advocacy efforts in real time. Included in this article is also a YouTube link to one of the participatory videos. We begin by considering the benefits and concerns of social media in social work education, followed by the implications in the field, with particular attention paid to advocacy. In the second section, we present the case study to demonstrate the application of social media platforms and conclude with practical considerations for social workers adopting social media when working alongside communities in social justice initiatives.

Action!: Student-Generated Videos in Social Work Education

Experiential learning is a vital aspect of social work education, particularly for teaching community practice. The literature, however, provides few examples of technology-based experiential assignments that educators can implement in their classrooms. This exploratory study examined an innovative student-generated video assignment developed for a social work community practice course. Thirty-seven former students spanning three distinct semesters completed an online survey of closed- and open-ended questions. Findings indicate the video assignment enhanced understanding of community practice and provided a unique diffusion factor. Participants appreciated how the video assignment differed from traditional assignments by offering opportunity for praxis, creativity, and acquisition of technological skills. Educators should note the challenges of student-generated videos to maximize their educational benefit and sustain student receptivity to such assignments. Teaching video-making skills has implications for post-graduation employment in the human service sector.

Teaching civic engagement: Evaluating an integrative service-learning program

The demands on successfully teaching intervention skills in macro (community) environments are numerous and extend beyond the confines of any one academic discipline. In particular, when considering community, the compounding of the multiple factors of social economics, diversity, social policy, history and political agendas requires an integrative approach. This mixed-methods retrospective article analyses the use of service-learning in an advanced Master of Social Work community practice course. Special attention is given to the construction of academic and community experience that facilitates learning integration and understanding of the ways in which factors compound on community wellbeing. Specifically this project involved students in efforts constructed to address violence directed by and against inner-city youth in a mid-sized northeastern city in the United States that is beset with gang violence and has led its state in per capita murders for four of the past five years. Recommendations and lessons learned presented in this article are directed at exploring a construction of service-learning that could address integrative learning in community intervention courses.
 
 Keywords: Service-learning, teaching, macro practice, violence

We Shall Overcome: Promoting an Agenda for Integrating Spirituality and Community Practice

Spirituality and social work practice are interwoven. The literature is robust with evidence for the importance of spirituality in direct practice. Although there is acknowledgement of the importance for spirituality in community practice, there is a paucity of research investigating how community practitioners incorporate spirituality into their work. This article explores the historical role of spirituality and community practice in the social work profession, provides an overview of the literature identifying the extent to which it addresses the integration of spirituality and social work community practice, and suggests implications for future research, practice and education.

Re-thinking ‘tradition’ and community development practice: integrating Derrida's ‘trace’ and Peile's ‘creative synthesis’ into a reconceptualising of ‘traditions’ and community development practice

This paper examines and critiques the notion of ‘tradition’ within community development literature. Appreciatively, the paper presents a typology of how the community development literature uses the notion of tradition—as geographically-defined, methodologically-oriented and intellectually-rooted practice; and also discusses the functions of tradition as ‘inspiration’ for community work practice. Critically, the paper discusses the limits of the concept, offering a cautionary note to the potential pitfalls of a focus on tradition. It proposes Derrida's ‘trace’ to moderate tradition as ‘stagnation of practice’. Furthermore, Peile's ‘creative synthesis’ is discussed to show how ‘parts’ of, or traces of different traditions can be appraised, modified and synthesised, through a creative process, into a new ‘whole’ which appears different to the sources of its constituent parts. Finally, the paper discusses the findings of a small research project that investigates the multiple ways ‘tradition’ is used or made sense of, by a small cohort of experienced community development workers within Brisbane, Australia.

Using theory in Youth and Community Work Practice

Using theory in Youth and Community Work Practice

The Place of Community in Social Work Practice Research: Conceptual and Methodological Developments

Community is widely acknowledged as a fundamental aspect of social work practice, and this formulation distinguishes social work from other professions. Because of this long-standing tradition, social work needs to make a greater investment in producing scientific to enable community change and to incorporate community context into practice. This type of research faces numerous challenges related to the complexity of community interventions, the lack of well-developed community measures, the difficulty of implementing experimental designs, and the spatial dynamics of communities. However, recent substantive and methodological developments should make it possible to advance research on the community as agent, target, and context for social work practice. KEY WORDS: community; geographic information systems; neighborhoods; research design ********** Community is a ubiquitous concept in social work practice, but as such, it has presented formidable challenges for researchers. Social work must come to terms with the methodological difficulties because community is an essential element of social work and is part of what distinguishes it from other professions. New research techniques and tools have produced important advances in community studies in other fields, but these developments have not sufficiently influenced social work practice research. This article identifies challenges to building an evidence base for community interventions and describes new research tools that may advance in the field. THE PLACE OF COMMUNITY Rosen assiduously reminded the social work profession of the need to build a particular type of for practice, which he referred to as knowledge for (Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 1999). Such rests on evidence about how change occurs, whether change produces desired outcomes and, most important, how beneficial change can be deliberately produced. This article draws on that framework and focuses on research that builds social work for control with respect to community change. The discussion emphasizes communities that are place-based, such as urban neighborhoods, suburban subdivisions, villages, and towns. These localized communities have geographic, psychological, and social meaning and referents, and they have consequences for the people who live and work there (Chaskin, 1997). Although these are not the only communities of importance to social work, they are often the context for community practice (Weil, 1996). Communities based on ethnicity or common interests often transcend local or national boundaries and present research dilemmas that are different from the place-based communities discussed in this article. Researchers have identified several features that may be essential for healthy, strong, sustainable, or effective communities, such as social capital, including bridging and bonding capital (Putnam, 2000; Temkin & Rohe, 1998); community capacity, including leadership, governance, and organization (Chaskin, Brown, Venkatesh, & Vidal, 2001); collective efficacy (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997); sense of community (Brodsky, O'Campo, & Aronson, 1999); social control (Sampson & Groves, 1989); neighboring; and amenities and resources (Fuerstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Sameroff, 1999); institutional strength, interorganizational relations, civic participation (Daley & Marsiglia, 2000); and safety (Buka, Stichick, Birdthistle, & Earls, 2001). Practice research needs to demonstrate how interventions with communities can produce changes in these attributes and processes. Knowledge for control requires evidence regarding the mediating processes that enable change so that the methods can be specified and replicated. With respect to social work practice in communities, the question of building for control is complicated by the fact that a community may be the agent of change, the target of change, or the context for change. …