A New Breed of Social Actionist Comes to Social Work: The Community Organization Student

Professionals in all fields are pressing for more autonomy in their work. Social work has never achieved full professional status because of its reluctance to grant autonomy to practitioners. The hierarchical bureaucratic structure of social agencies, which enforces prolonged individual supervision of workers, has achieved uniformity of practice at the expense of creativity and innovation. The author proposes Georg Simmel's model of superordination—subordination as a framework for considering new forms of supervision. Peer group supervision, consultation, and in-service training are potentially more democratic training methods than individual supervision, and could encourage self-confidence and creativity.     

Promoting a Development Focus in the Community Organization Curriculum

As the problem of poverty has become more acute, community organization teaching needs to focus more directly on programs that will raise standards of living at the local level. This article suggests that African community development is highly relevant to the promotion of community-based economic and social development projects. Although the idea that approaches from Third World countries can be adapted to enhance educational programs in the United States is a novel one, the African approach to community development has much to offer American schools of social work that are seeking to prepare students to work with poor communities in both inner-city and rural areas.     

The Research Component of the Master's Degree Curriculum in Social Work: A Survey Summary

This paper reports on a survey conducted on formal research requirements in the master's degree program of accredited schools of social work. Requirements were found to vary widely in type and extent among the sixty-seven reporting schools, ranging from schools that required only a single research course to those that required courses in research and statistics and an empirical research project as well. In terms of the proportion of total graduation credit devoted to research-related requirements, the spread was from 24 to 5 percent, with a mean of 12 percent. Issues and implications for social work education are noted.     

Transforming a Charity Organization into a Social Justice Community Center

Recent budget cuts at the federal, state, and local levels of government are seriously affecting human service programs in America. Those most affected have the least political and economic power: the poor, homeless, and hungry. To respond to these cutbacks and their service implications, this paper describes an attempt to transform a traditional micro-oriented, casework agency, located in one of the poorest neighborhoods of a large Northeastern city, into a progressive community center that advocates for political empowerment at the grassroots level.     

A Wholistic Ethno-Cultural Paradigm: A New Model for Community Organization Teaching and Practice

To prepare workers for effective practice in community organizing and development in emerging communities, schools os social work need to give careful attention to desiging relevant practice teaching and field practicum experiences. This article proposes a new model for community organization teaching and practicing, aimed at increasing the effectiveness of social work interventions in neo-gemienschaft ethnic-minority communities.     

A Comprehensive Family Perspective in Planning Social Work Curriculum Content

Working with families is given high priority in social work education, but little systematic analysis of planning family curriculum content has been attempted. This paper uses developmental family theory to conceptualize comprehensive curriculum content. The theoretical facets of (1) societal-institutional, (2) group-interactional, and (3) individual-psychological are used to focus appropriate points in the curriculum to include various aspects of family functioning. Family theory is distinguished from family therapy, and planning of minority group content is explored.     

A Strategic Planning Process for a Small Nonprofit Organization: A Hospice Example

Strategic planning is an essential part of management. However, planning processes can consume great amounts of time and resources that small, nonprofit organizations may lack. Moreover, the process that is used can be tedious and may result in plans that are discarded before or during their implementation. In this article, a strategic planning process is presented that incorporates a Policy Delphi group technique and Situation Structuring, a computer program that assists participants in structuring or defining the problems to be addressed in the plan. The organization to which the process is applied is a small, nonprofit hospice. Both the planning process and an evaluation of the implementation of the resultant strategic plan are examined.     

Application of Social Science Knowledge to the Community Organization Field

Community organization graduates of the School of Social Work, University of Washington, from 1966 to 1971, found a ready market for their skills although there was evidence of some slackening of demand and broader diversification of initial employment settings in the last two years. Graduates moved rapidly into administrative and management levels and appeared relatively stable in terms of interagency and geographical mobility. The small number of ethnically identified graduates made meaningful comparisons difficult. Sex, however, was a disadvantaging factor in employability and subsequent status. Of the ninety-one graduates surveyed, 94.5 percent responded Similar follow-up study of graduates in other geographic regions was recommended     

Community Relationships and the Course in Social Problems

This article describes the Native American History in a Box curriculum which is designed to introduce elementary and middle-level students to Native American cultures. The curriculum consists of a five day unit addressing the following concepts pertaining to Native American Nations: settlements, tools, sustenance, pottery, and contact with Europeans. In addition, the development of the curriculum, the daily lessons, and the activities are discussed. Each daily lesson includes step-by-step instructions and the required materials. Finally, the authors discuss some of the pragmatic issues that influenced the development and implementation of the curriculum.     

Measuring Rational and Organizational-Political Planning Activities of Community Organization Workers

Abstract

Social planning in community organization work reflects two dominant planning styles-a rational style and an organizational-political style. Drawing upon literature from related disciplines, this article describes the development of an expert test that identified indices for the measurement of rational planning activity on the one hand, and organizational-political planning activity on the other. These indices were then applied to investigate the patterns of planning activities of a sample of 138 community organization workers in Israel. The findings show varying tendencies of workers in implementing planning activities, and indicate a lack of homogenous consolidated task patterns. Workers also were found to focus more on traditional planning activities than upon activities based on new knowledge. The findings underscore the importance of identifying factors which influence the tendency of workers to engage in planning activities in the two styles, rational and organizational-political.     

Community Organization and Social Activism: Black Boston and the Antislavery Movement*

This paper uses data from an intensive study of Boston's antebellum black community to demonstrate how sustained social activism is embedded in the formal and informal institutions of the community. The social networks of cooperative institutions were primary factors in this community's ability to mobilize and sustain protest actions and to call attention to social injustice. This examination of antebellum black Boston indicates that the issue of slavery was crucial to social activism. This suggests that the presence of a salient issue which links the everyday lives of participants with a public issue may be an important factor in building a social movement based in a poor, relatively powerless community.     

Social Work Students' Changing Perceptions of Social Problems After a Year of Community Intervention

This paper aims to throw light on the emotional and cognitive processes of students within social change-oriented field work as they develop over a year, as described through a projective and phenomenological art medium drawn and discussed at the beginning and at the end of the year. The literature on social work points to a discrepancy between the cognitive structural explanations of social problems that are taught to social work students, and their tendency to prefer focusing on individual rather than on societal levels of intervention. The aim of this examination of the students' processes over the year is to increase our understanding of the students' experience and understanding of their social change mission, so as to better prepare them for the challenges it entails, and to see where they get ‘lost’. Findings from this paper point to the gradual internalization of social change as a complex process, combined with the reframing of this complexity into tangible results.     

Volunteer Work in the Introductory Course: A Special Curriculum Component

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of a school of social work in requiring volunteer work of students enrolled in the introductory undergraduate course. Consideration is given to the history of students' agency participation, program structure, and variety of placements. Observations by students, faculty and agency workers are included. Case examples of volunteer placements are described. Advantages and drawbacks of the program are assessed.     

Organization Community Embeddedness: The Social Impact of Enterprise Restructuring in the Post-Communist Czech Republic

The aim of this paper is to examine the impactof the enterprise restructuring process, which hastypified the experience of post-communist industry, onlocal communities. It is argued that restructuring has had differential impacts on communities,and one key factor in making this judgment is the natureof the enterprise community relationship inherited fromthe former state socialist regime. Conceptually, this relationship can be understood in terms ofthe social and institutional embeddedness of theenterprise in its local community. The paper draws uponresearch into three large former state enterprises in the now Czech Republic in order to examinethe effects of different degrees of embeddedness on theimpact of restructuring decisions to reduce enterpriseoverstaffing, and to unburden the enterprise of its social and welfare assets andactivities.     

A Model Curriculum for Occupational Social Work

This paper reports the results of a survey experiment in which a national sample of NASW members was presented with systematically altered versions of a summary of a hypothetical study of casework effectiveness and asked to make judgments about the quality of the research, its importance to social work, and its significance for their own practice. It was found that although respondents distinguished between studies with good and bad research designs, their judgments of the quality of the research and its implications for their own practice were significantly influenced by whether the findings were positive or negative.     

Community Revitalization in Post-Katrina New Orleans: A Critical Analysis of Social Capital in an African American Neighborhood

ABSTRACT

This research explored the role of social capital, particularly civic engagement and social trust, in community revitalization efforts in a primarily African American post-Katrina neighborhood (n?=?153). Findings reveal high levels of participation in neighborhood and political activities but low levels of social trust. Eighty-four percent of this primarily African American sample reported that they do not trust people of other races as compared to 23 to 32% of African American respondents in the national study. Drawing from critical theoretical perspectives, we offer a critique of the limits of social capital theory as well as a discussion of the importance of building social and racial trust as central components of community development practice. Implications include emphasizing organizational capacity-building activities, community organizing training, and racial reconciliation efforts in post-disaster environments.     

Motivations and Differential Participation in a Community Currency System: The Dynamics Within a Local Social Movement Organization1

Community currency is an understudied, alternative social movement. These local networks are grassroots, collective efforts to form an alternative market with the hopes of empowering the economically marginalized and building social capital. Original data collected from members of a local currency system are employed to investigate their motivations to join and the congruence between motivating factors and various forms of participation. Four categories of motivations are identified and multivariate models are estimated to assess which are the most salient predictors of differential participation. The results provide some support for the congruence hypothesis. As Knoke (1988) predicted, member motivations play a role in shaping forms of participation. This evidence is used to draw larger implications for social movement research.