Grassroots Meet Homophobia

SUMMARY

This case study highlights the challenges and successes of a small grassroots effort to change the learning environment for GLBT youth in a local public school district located within the conservative social climate of a small city in Colorado. Strategies included tailoring the social action agenda to the unique characteristics of the conservative community; finding allies in the school district; recruiting volunteer professional talent; and reframing social justice issues to focus on the educational value that every child is entitled to a physically and psychologically safe and supportive learning environment in order to achieve full academic potential.     

Building on Mutual Goals

ABSTRACT

In this era of diminishing federal and state funds for social services, greater attention has been directed toward how social work and the religious sector can cooperate in providing services. This article suggests that social workers should move beyond this focus and begin to identify and join in collective action with local congregations or faith-based organizations, which take an activist approach toward community needs. The author uses a case study of an activist central city church to illustrate how churches can be involved in community change. Social workers are encouraged to consider all methods of collaboration with the religious sector that would lead to the mutual goal of community betterment.     

Psychodynamics and empowerment in community mental health

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between empowerment philosophy and psychodynamic principles and practices, as it applies to community mental health work. It suggests that as empowerment philosophy is more a system of values than a model of mental health and illness, it cannot in itself act as a framework for understanding and working with disturbed people. I suggest ways of disentangling the often fraught relationship between the two frameworks by identifying the contribution I see each as able to make to the task of providing services which sustain people in the community, and attempt to articulate the elements of a practice model consistent with both sets of principles.     

Community members' perceptions on social,cultural changes and its implication for educational transformation in a small school district community

Abstract

Systemic organisational transformation with broad stakeholder involvement is needed in our educational systems. While involving all stakeholders is crucial for building grass-roots community support and garnering input in order to achieve fundamental transformation in schools, community members are typically the least represented stakeholder group in most change efforts. This article's investigation of the community's involvement in a change effort in the United States reflects how important it is to harness the power of stakeholder ownership and help community members communicate and participate in learning communities. This study specifically examined the impact of community members' involvement in school-based community forums on the change effort at large.     

Four Months to System Change

Abstract

This paper discusses the process through which students in a Community Intervention class brought about change in university policy to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a university holiday. It includes tactics and strategies used to influence decision makers, to educate the community, and to empower the minority community on the campus. It discusses important lessons for students including the political nature of system change, issues of power and stratification, and the impact of successful tactics on the opposition. This project was able to bring about change in a system that was unwilling to change. In today's social climate, that is often what social workers must do. Experiencing the process of system change during the educational process allows for the lessons of one class to be applied to larger systems of service delivery in professional practice.     

Pentru Voi Fundatia

SUMMARY

This paper presents the philosophy, history, and mission of Pentru Voi Fundatia as a sustainable “best practice” model of interdisciplinary community development (ICD). It is based on positive social, economic, organizational, and/or physical changes that improve the general welfare of the community while providing services to a specific vulnerable population. The Pentru Voi Bakery, one of many programs operated for persons with intellectual disabilities by the Foundation, is used to showcase the key elements of successful ICD. These elements are partnerships, integration, innovation, and transferability. While all community development projects are inherently different, other NGOs interested in creating sustainable programs that utilize the collective agency of local, regional, and international partners can learn from this example. Community Development literature and social entrepreneurship literature are reviewed and discussed as they relate to the Pentru Voi model. Pentru Voi is framed as a practice model based upon the qualities of best practice outlined by the International Labor Office.     

Public School Resegregation after Desegregation: Some Preliminary Findings

Abstract

This research continues the effort to understand the sociocultural and social-psychological effects resulting from rapid change in rural communities. Two aspects of social well-being that underlie the concept of community are addressed: a sense of local identity and solidarity and a sense of trust. Change in these perceptions during periods of rapid community growth or decline could indicate a changing sense of community and changing levels of social well-being. Four communities, each of which experienced different patterns of population growth and decline, are examined. Analysis indicated that the dimension of community reflected by trust of most people in the community did not change during periods of growth or decline, but that the dimension reflected by a sense of local identity and solidarity suffered during both population growth and population decline. Local identity and solidarity increased in the community that experienced population stabilization after several years of rapid growth. These findings highlight the importance of viewing community as multidimensional and as a resilient social phenomenon.     

Reshaping to serve evolving communities: Addressing immigrant needs in the library

Abstract

Libraries face evolving communities and must constantly reorient themselves to serve new needs. This article examines the impact of emerging immigrant communities on library services. It discusses the emergence of library services to immigrants and the diverse faces of these services, which may include foreign language collections, access to technology and connections with local services, as appropriately determined through community analysis. The Atwater Library and Computer Centre in Montréal, Québec is examined as a case study of community analysis informing service reorientation. This article will be useful for organizations working with immigrants or community service providers confronted with changing demographics.     

A University-Community Partnership to Change Public Policy

Abstract

This paper describes a project aimed at promoting major change in government policy toward the growing problem of food insecurity in Israel. The project was initiated by Ben-Gurion University in collaboration with community service and social advocacy organizations. This joint action led to a dramatic change in government activity. The problem of food insecurity moved from a state of obfuscation to the establishment of a special ministerial committee mandated to develop policy guidelines for a national school lunch program. For higher education to contribute to the community, necessary preconditions must exist: Is the faculty committed to promotion of social change? Do the organizational and community environments legitimize university-sponsored activity for such purposes? Is the faculty competent to act effectively in the community and adopt strategies for political influence? Are there organizational mechanisms, action frameworks, and community contacts that enable collaboration for the purposes of social change? This case discussion uses the analytical framework developed by Taylor (1985) to evaluate the preconditions for action and the processes involved in facilitating university-community collaboration for promoting policy change.     

Transcending Boundaries

SUMMARY

This paper presents a participatory research and planned change effort to develop a coordinated community response system to domestic violence in a United States culturally diverse community with a large immigrant population. This work grew out of an international, interdisciplinary project that was designed to establish ongoing collaborative relationships between university and community practitioners in the United States, Honduras, and Costa Rica around the theme of intra-familial violence, particularly gender-based violence against women. The paper analytically describes the international collaborative project, the local community-based participatory research and community development project, and lessons learned from both the local and international interdisciplinary collaboration. Examination of differences across disciplinary and cultural contexts generated critical reflection on the need to consider reframing domestic violence in the context of fundamental human rights, as is the case in Central America. At the same time, challenges around developing a coordinated community response, addressing inadequacies in the legal system, and implementing education and training were echoed across boundaries, demonstrating the need for continued international collaboration.     

Out of the Wilderness – Australian Social Workers Embrace Their Campaigning Roots

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to social capital research and its applicability to social work practice and social policy. It provides an examination of the complexity of social capital and strategies used to build it in local communities. Drawing on data collected from a large quantitative study collected in a rural city in Australia, experiencing rapid population growth, it reports on levels of social, civic, and community participation related to a range of demographic variables. Results highlight the significance of gender, life stage, socioeconomic status, and the influence of neighbourhood connected to different types of participation. Findings presented in this paper draw attention to the unevenness of participation in social, civic, and community life linked to key demographics. The author concludes by arguing that community-building approaches have some merit, so long as critical differences accessing bonding and bridging social capital are acknowledged, and opportunities to promote participation are facilitated.     

Neighborhood and Community Organizing in Colonias

ABSTRACT

Promotores are leaders in traditional Mexican communities whose role in agrarian life dates back to the land reform movement following the revolution. Recently, there have been efforts at developing these roles in the colonias in the United States' southwest as a means of providing health education and civic information in these hard-to-reach communities. This paper discusses an example of how community organizers incorporated the promotora concept among a group of women to bring about social and political change in their colonia.     

Social Capital and Local Economic Development: Implications for Community Social Work Practice

Summary

Although the concept of social capital has direct relevance to community practice, it is not widely known in social work. This paper defines the concept, traces the development of social capital theory, and examines ways in which community social workers can promote local economic development by enhancing social capital. It contends that community social workers can make a major contribution to local economic development by implementing projects that mobilize social capital and promote the material well-being of local people.     

Ease of retrieval as a source of information in social change judgments

Abstract

Several authors have proposed two alternative sources of information in memory based judgments: the contents retrieved from memory and the ease with which the retrieval process is perceived. Schwarz and colleagues have made it clear that, in certain circumstances, people base their judgments on the subjective experience of ease with which the information is retrieved. The present work studies the extent to which the use of this heuristic could be generalized to judgments of social change (Study 1) and some of the factors that can affect the ability to diagnose the ease of retrieval as a source of information (Study 2). The results obtained confirm the ability to generalize this heuristic to judgments of social change and to establish some conditions that affect the diagnostic- city of this source of information.     

Disabled citizens as researchers – Challenges and benefits of collaboration for effective action and change

ABSTRACT

This article reports on the evaluation of an initial pilot for a collaborative research project undertaken in an English county between a service user-led Coalition of Disabled People, the local authority and local university. The project sought to map the assets and resources for/of disabled people in their local community as well as needs and gaps, to inform the Coalition’s strategic planning and raise awareness of disability issues across the county.

The article discusses an inclusive, co-productive approach using participatory action research. It focuses on experiences from the pilot stage of the project and considers how the authors worked together with the required knowledge exchange and power-sharing to recruit and train researchers with expertise from their personal experience of disability. Recruitment ensured they had relevant qualities and skills that could be developed, to increase their confidence, knowledge and skills set as researchers. They then undertook photo-elicited, semi-structured interviews with other disabled people, analysed findings and created photographic exhibitions for dissemination and awareness raising.

Demonstrating a commitment to emancipatory research and collective action for change, the discussion considers the promotion of shared values within the research team, and explores the benefits and challenges encountered during the process and how the particular stages were managed to achieve the beneficial outcomes of the pilot. The article seeks to add to the literature of participatory/emancipatory action research for social work.     

Vertical Village: Social Contacts in a Singles Highrise Complex

Abstract

This paper examines the characteristics of community life in a age-segregated highrise complex and the implications of this new form of housing for the quality of urban life. The physical characteristics of the housing do not determine behavior of occupants, but use of the residential environment is shaped by the image of the community and is also affected by the characteristics of residents and their housing expectations. The reputation of the community serves to attract a certain type of person—the upper middle class, well-educated, and single young adult—in high concentrations.

Despite previous studies which have characterized young adults in city neighborhoods as totally cut off from local ties, a combination of factors encourages a high degree of neighboring among this population: homogeneity in terms of age, class, ethnicity, and stage of the life cycle: social selectivity of persons with a positive interest in neighboring: a high concentration of persons occupying a deviant social status; and inter-locking networks of friendship, work and organizational ties. “Marginals” in this environment are the small minority of older and married tenants who compensate for their deviant status vis a vis the majority group of young singles by over-selecting other tenants like themselves for nieghboring relations.     

Bridging the Fragmented Community

ABSTRACT

In the global era, with the retrenchment of welfare states, people have to turn to their community, a major component of civil society, for support. In this paper, a fluid concept of community is proposed in response to the fragmentation and diversity caused by globalization in the local community. It is argued that to bridge different interests in the community, settlement houses, as a third sector organization in the community, is an effective community-building mechanism. This paper provides a brief history of the success of the settlement house in building solidarity and generating social capital in the local community. The author identifies implications for the role of the social work profession in revitalizing the settlement house as a community-building approach.     

A Commentary on the Triadic Theory of Influence as a Guide for Adapting HIV Prevention Programs for New Contexts and Populations

Summary

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the Collaborative HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Project-South Africa (CHAMPSA) began and to present some of the results from this South African version of CHAMP. This paper informs readers of a number of lessons about international program translation. The first important lesson is that there are universal principles of health behavior change that seem to be useful across cultures. The implementation of these principles, however, needs to be informed by an in-depth understanding of local cultural contexts. The second important lesson is that it is possible to undertake large-scale, scientifically sophisticated community-based prevention research in developing countries through international collaborative research projects. It is the authors' hope that this mixture of science, service, and business will inspire other public health, community mental health, research, and business professionals to develop international prevention interventions that can be shown to be effective, and disseminated on a wide scale.     

Whither e-learning? Conceptions of change and innovation in higher education

Abstract

E-learning, as an innovation, has been associated with radical change, but many of the accepted organisational strategies for managing such change have failed to deliver the expected benefits and advantages. There is a pressing requirement to understand better the nature of e-learning, as an educational innovation, and to evolve contextually derived frameworks for change which align with organisational culture and practice. This paper proposes a processual change framework for embedding e-learning, derived from a longitudinal study of four Australian universities, each adopting a different approach to implementing e-learning across their respective institutions.     

Changing Contexts of Practice: Challenges for Social Work and Community Development

ABSTRACT

In a rapidly changing global environment, there have been renewed calls to position community development more centrally in social work, particularly in the face of contemporary practice challenges. This paper analyses the broad policy contexts of neoliberalism, globalisation, and governance change and discusses how these forces interact with social work and community development, drawing on examples from Australia and Ireland. The paper argues that sociopolitical forces both restrict and present opportunities for social work and community development practice and we seek to reactivate debate about the position of community development within changing and challenging contexts.

IMPLICATIONS

• Contextualises community development practice, policy, and research within contemporary environments of neoliberalism, globalisation, and governance change.

• Critically evaluates implications and new opportunities for social work and community development, drawing on examples from Australia and Ireland.

• Reactivates debate and analysis on the position of community development in contemporary social work as we move forward into the new decade, and the next global agenda for social work and social development.