Afrocentricity as an Alternative World View for Equality

An official goal of the social work profession is that of equality for all. However, social work's ability to achieve this goal is hampered by the Eurocentric world view, wherein reality is structured to emphasize fragmentation, conflict, and domination, which foster inequality. A better philosophical ''fit'' for social work is the Afrocentric world view. Its view of reality that underscores interdependency, collectivity, and spirituality places it in an excellent position to promote equality. Social workers are encouraged to apply the Afrocentric paradigm to transform social work from a profession primarily concerned with direct practice to a social movement of equality and justice.     

Addressing Barriers to University-Community Collaboration

Abstract

University-community partnerships, and COPC programs in particular, offer important opportunities for traditionally segregated groups to work together in collaborative relationships. The challenge of bringing people who possess distinct differences in background and social power together is a long-standing issue. Class, status, and organizational differences may impede collaboration. This article discusses the history of COPC as social policy and reviews an evaluation report of successful community-university partnerships. Drawing from the community organizing literature in sociology and social work, this article suggests community organizing methods that address structural obstacles to collaborative work. Especially in COPC programs characterized by multiple interactions, it is the community based organization (CBO) which has greatest facility to equalize the playing field between disparate groups. The role of community organizers in CBOs is to acknowledge and disrupt the structural inequalities inherent in these relationships. The community organizer must resist the role of expert or buffer between the community and university and instead strive toward authentic collaboration.     

Evaluating the Efficacy of the Prodigy Prevention Program across Urban and Rural Locales

Comorbid juvenile offenders are an overlooked, vulnerable population which tend to present with a more diagnostically serious picture. Their arrest rates have dramatically increased over the last 10 years, yet there is a dearth of prevention and intervention programs available. This study examined the effects of the Prodigy Cultural Arts Program on at-risk and adjudicated youth in a rural and an urban locale. Results suggest a significant improvement in family functioning overall as well as statistically significant changes in mental health symptoms including Depression/Anxiety, Somatic, and Suicidal symptoms for both males and females at urban and rural locales. Females appeared to especially benefit from the program. The findings here extend our knowledge regarding viable alternatives for juvenile offenders with mental health symptoms, particularly females.     

The Supportive Community

Abstract

This study examines supportive community programs in Israel, which aim to improve the quality of life of the elderly. These innovative programs pool existing resources to provide a benefits package that includes medical services, an emergency call switchboard, a “neighborhood facilitator,” and social activities. Data were collected in 2000-2001 using qualitative and quantitative methods. The program provides specific services to meet needs that otherwise are not adequately addressed. The major contributions of the program reported by the members was increasing their personal security (two-thirds), easing the burden on their children (one-third), and enabling them to remain at home (one-quarter). The supportive community program enriches the variety of services available, thus providing the elderly with the choice of staying within their familiar surroundings of their homes and neighborhoods. This model appears to be both a cost-effective way to facilitate aging in place and a way to meet many of the elderly's essential needs, thereby maintaining their quality of life.     

Organizational Transformations in Community Design Centers: An Analysis through Giddens’ Theory of Structuration Framework

Through provision of design, planning and advocacy services, university-based community design centers have a long history of community service and engagement. Utilizing Giddens’ structuration framework and through a comparative case-study analysis, this study examined whether and how community design centers transform over time responding to the changes in social, political, professional and economic contexts. Administrative support, external funding environment, reputation gained by successful projects, changes in human capital, and the trends in the profession and the higher education surfaced as rule- and resource-related factors enabling or constraining organizational changes. The lessons learned from these centers, regarding multidisciplinary collaborations, capitalizing on intellectual resources, and filling in the existing community niches, have the potential to inform others on how to institutionalize and sustain university-community partnerships.     

Child Abuse Prevention: The Community as Co-Worker

Much of the literature on community organization describes the efforts of a worker to enable a community to coalesce arouund an external enemy in order to resolve systemic service delivery problems. Based on the mid-point of a federally-funded child abuse prevention project, this article describes the roles of worker and community as colleagues in an effort to enhance the community's capacity to shape its own values and behaviors to reduce child abuse and neglect. This article poses a challenge to the social work education community to be more responsive to the potential of becoming a co-worker with the community, and to enhance the social worker's skills in defining strenghts rather than weakness of communities.     

Chapter 16. Community Caregiving Partnerships in Aging

SUMMARY

Although greater numbers of families are providing support to older adults, a lack of comprehensive programming in resource allocation continues to exist at the social policy level. This chapter explores how community caregiving partnerships may contribute to a solution.     

Reconsidering the ‘idea’ of evidence in evidence-based policy and practice

Evidence-based policy and practice (EBP) has become an important social work conceptual framework. Yet, the core EBP concept, the concept of evidence, remains ill-defined. I propose a modification of the concept of evidence as applied to EBP effectiveness questions. As a basis for this reformulation ideas about evidence are examined from cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives including epistemology, philosophy of science, evidence-science, and law. I propose that for EBP effectiveness questions: (1) to be considered ‘relevant evidence’ an explanatory connection between an intervention and an outcome must be established rather than a mere association; (2) the EBP definition of ‘best available evidence’ should include total available evidence (rather than a subset) about effectiveness, causal roles (i.e., mechanisms), and support factors and be inclusive of high-quality experimental and observational studies as well as high-quality mechanistic reasoning; (3) the familiar five-step EBP process should be expanded to include formulation of warranted, evidence-based arguments and that evidence appraisal be guided by three high level criteria of relevance, credibility, and strength rather than rigid evidence hierarchies; (4) comparative effectiveness research strategies, especially pragmatic controlled studies, hold promise for providing relevant and actionable evidence needed for policy and practice decision-making and successful implementation.     

Participatory evaluation of a community–academic partnership to inform capacity-building and sustainability

The Tampa Bay Community Cancer Network (TBCCN) was formed as a partnership comprised of committed community based organizations (grassroots, service, health care organizations) and a National Cancer Institute designated cancer center working together to reduce cancer health disparities. Adhering to principles of community-based participatory research, TBCCN's primary aims are to develop and sustain outreach, training, and research programs that aim to reach medically underserved, multicultural and multilingual populations within the Tampa Bay tri-county area.Using a participatory evaluation approach, we recently evaluated the partnerships’ priorities for cancer education and outreach; perspectives on the partnerships’ adherence to CBPR principles; and suggestions for sustaining TBCCN and its efforts. The purpose of this paper is to describe implementation and outcomes of this participatory evaluation of a community/academic partnership, and to illustrate the application of evaluation findings for partnership capacity-building and sustainability. Our evaluation provides evidence for partners’ perceived benefits and realized expectations of the partnership and illustrates the value of ongoing and continued partnership assessment to directly inform program activities and build community capacity and sustainability.     

The Challenge of Partnerships Between the State,Capital, and Civil Society: The Case of the Media Development and Diversity Agency in South Africa

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Inspired by “extra-market” initiatives to ensure media diversity in social-demo- cratic Northern Europe, the...     

Evaluating community-based treatment programmes for men who sexually abuse children

The currently dominant multi-factorial explanations of sex offending have been reflected in the widespread adoption of cognitive-behavioural groupwork methods where treatment foci are those attitudes, beliefs, cognitions and behaviours believed to contribute towards the maintenance of sexually abusive practices. Community-based programmes have mushroomed during this decade, with 97% of regional probation services now having provision for sex offender treatment. However, these relatively recent and dramatic developments of practice have to a large extent occurred outside of a framework of rigorous planning and evaluation. This article begins by outlining a rationale for both the treatment of sex offenders and evaluating programmes. This is followed by a framework for evaluation within which treatment providers can consider the issues involved (including the methodological difficulties) in setting up research designed to evaluate treatment effectiveness. It is suggested that, while small-scale (in-house) research may tell us something about the success or otherwise of individual programmes, it is the larger-scale projects carried out by independent researchers that will inform us as to the impact of cognitive-behavioural group work on recidivism and offence-related psychological variables. Such research has the potential to assist policy-makers and to aid managers and practitioners in the development of effective treatment programmes. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.