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.     

Ethical and Racial Conflicts in Urban-Based Action Research

Abstract

Through the use of a case study of a joint faculty-student research project, this paper discusses how community-based action research, policy analysis, and community organizing can be synthesized in work with low-income communities. It outlines potential implications of this synthesis for both community practice and social work education.     

Transformative Community Practice

ABSTRACT

The authors examine how well models and concepts of community practice fit their practice in an extremely low income urban African-American community. They describe the evolution of their agency's response to community disinvestment over the past 30 years. That response has been to create indigenous African-centered organizations that can transform how people see themselves, the community, and their futures. Early childhood education, social services, economic development, and leadership training and organizing are core programs. The authors urge model builders and educators to include the concept of transformation as a community change goal, and to strengthen attention to institution building skills, “cultural work,” and capital formation.     

Community Practice in the Bulldozer’s Shadow: The History and Legacy of Social Work in Urban Renewal

Social work has a long history of involvement in urban development policy, dating to the settlement house movement. This article explores a neglected part of this history by analyzing the role of social work in urban renewal programs. The functions of social work in urban renewal—including relocating families displaced by slum clearance and community organizing to foster resident input in planning—reflect enduring tensions in practice between social justice and social control. Implications for current practice are explored as the profession continues to define its part in urban redevelopment policies.     

Human Service Education Programs: Their Nature and Significance for Social Work

This paper examines emerging human service education programs at the community college, baccalaureate, and graduate levels. These programs bear a variety of titles such as mental health, social services, community development, and applied social sciences, as well as the more general human services label. Because they are relatively new phenomena, the nature and purposes of these programs are not widely known or understood. They appear to share some common purposes with social work education, while at the same time the potential for competition or conflict exists. Their significance for social work education programs and their graduates are considered.     

Community Planning That Is “Caught” and “Taught”: Experiential Learning from Town Meetings

Generalist, strenghts-oriented social work practice requires practitioners who are equipped both academically and experientially to deal with a variety of interventions and client systems of different sizes and types. Social work programs need to assure that community practice is learned in both classroom and field. Generalist practice models and experiences should include a focus on the community as the unit of attention. Too often, community-related tasks that support individual clients are emphasized, resembling "systems-oriented casework" more than community practice. Strategies should support the development of community strenghts, esteem, and identity. This article describes a community project undertaken by a school of social work that provided students with experiential learning in community planning. Three town meetings were designed and led by a team of community leaders, students, and faculty to engage citizens in community planning efforts. The design of the town meetings and the integration of theory and practice focused on building community strenghts. Certain risks, creativity, and resources are required for developing powerful and relevant experiences for students in community practice. The implications for social work education are discussed.     

Rabble Rousing in a Red State: Lessons Learned From Organizing for Worker Rights in a Highly Conservative State

This article provides an analysis of a brief case study in community organizing undertaken by low-wage fast food workers and community allies over the issue of wage theft. The case analyzed in this article takes place in a highly conservative state in the South Central region of the United States. Through utilizing critical pedagogy, social action, action research, and praxis, workers were able to stop the wage theft. Despite the victory by workers, lessons learned from this experience point to a need for the development of more innovative strategies in labor organizing that emphasize community building and popular education to develop worker-led strategies and movements that work in the most conservative states and contexts in the United States.     

Lessons for Academics for Grassroots Community Organizing: A Case Study—The Industrial Areas Foundation

This article describes and critically analyzes the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the most significant community organizing endeavor in the nation. Examination of the IAF is valuable to academic social work because of the contradiction between social work's commitment to group change efforts and the limited amount of related social work employmeny. Social work can benefit from a fuller understanding of non-academic, community organizing activity. The IAF's strategic model, structure, underlying ideologies and organizing mechanics are detailed. Its training processes as well as transmitted concepts and skills are described. Lastly a critique of the IAF's methodology is presented.     

Reconceptualizing Community Organization in India

SUMMARY

This article traces the history of community organization (CO) in the disciplinary and practice arena in India. Although CO within the academia grew with social work, the trajectory of CO practice reveals an increasing tension with the discipline of social work, especially the way it is structured and taught in India. The interface with the community development (CD) programme of the government, as also the growth of the voluntary sector and the influence of new social movements, compelled a review of the orientation of CD and CO. A sectoral thrust on livelihoods, health, education, housing, wages, land alienation, access to entitlements along with the pluralization of debates on caste, ethnicity, tribal and gender identities enriched CO in India. The article offers a perspective on CO based on practice and the critical engagements of faculty members in one of the premier institutes of India which offers social work programmes. Concerted efforts to respond to the changing social and political context with consistent pro-poor stances provided unique insights which are reshaping, refining and re-conceptualizing the perspective of CO in India. This is reflected in course work, the conscious recasting of fieldwork, the criteria of selecting sites of practice and agencies, and the policy work undertaken by faculty members. Could the new curriculum be termed as transdisciplinary or is CO emerging as a distinct discipline? This is a question posed for further debate.     

The forgotten history of CSWE’s shift away from community colleges

ABSTRACT

From the 1950s to mid-1970s social work educators in the United States considered developing a multi-level continuum of social work education including associate degrees. The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) added baccalaureate degree programs only. By 1979 the idea of including associate degrees in this continuum disappeared from the scholarly conversation. This qualitative historical research explores factors that led to the exclusion of community colleges from CSWE membership and prevented accreditation of associate degree programs. Using archival evidence, it synthesizes primary and secondary sources and applies a critical pedagogy framework to highlight concerns. Findings suggest that distrust, the pace of change, professionalization, BSW program development, cultural differences, resistance to change, and a lack of external pressure coalesced to rebuff recognition of community colleges as an alternate pathway for social work education in the U.S.     

Community-based accompaniment & social work—A complementary approach to social action

Accompaniment, or the intentional practice of presence, emphasizes processes and relationships over outcomes, with the ultimate goal of leveraging privilege and collectively changing destructive systems. Though not widely recognized in social work, accompaniment has been applied globally. Here, we outline an overview of accompaniment, including how it has been applied in social work literature and practice. We then propose community-based accompaniment as an approach to complement traditional models of social action as a necessary, yet accessible way to further advance community organizing in social work education and practice, and ultimately promote transformative social change.     

Race,Power and Social Action in Neighborhood Community Organizing: Reproducing and Resisting the Social Construction of the Other

Scholars argue in favor of social action in community organizing to address the oppression experienced by racialized groups. This study examines how community organizing practice in one diverse neighborhood constructed race to understand the potential for social action. Using interview and observational data with 16 community organizers working in 1 diverse, low-income neighborhood in Québec, Canada, I examine the social construction of race through the lens of postcolonial theory and the writings of Michel Foucault. I argue that a discourse of neutrality existed among community organizers, which was tied to state policy and a colonial discourse embedded therein. The resulting disconnect between race and power in community organizing practice not only forecloses on social change efforts, it also extends a state-driven nation-building agenda into community. As the basis for an anticolonial approach to neighborhood community organizing, I juxtapose the discourse of neutrality in community organizing with strategies that recoupled race and power by drawing attention to efforts among community organizers that were antagonistic to the discourse.     

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.     

Utilizing Digital Advocacy in Community Organizing: Lessons Learned from Organizing in Virtual Spaces to Promote Worker Rights and Economic Justice

This article discusses the usefulness and challenges associated with utilizing social media technologies in the context of community organizing practice, often referred to as digital advocacy. We ground the analysis of digital advocacy in the context of a recent organizing effort undertaken by social work academics, grass roots organizers, and allies to support the boycott of Hyatt Hotels in San Antonio, Texas, by marginalized hotel workers and labor unions through advocating that the Society for Social Work Research relocate their 2014 conference from the Grand Hyatt, San Antonio, and to work toward better conference planning procedures in the future.     

Improving Social Work Students' Understanding of Health and Social Justice Knowledge through the Implementation of Service Learning at a Free Community Health Clinic

Service learning is a teaching strategy that involves engaging in a mutually beneficial partnership between a community and students in the classroom. Social work education and service learning share core values of service and social justice and, when unified, can offer students unique opportunities to engage in meaningful application of knowledge and skills in a real-world setting. This article provides an exemplar describing the unique student learning outcomes that resulted from a service learning partnership between graduate-level social work students in a diversity course and a community health clinic serving Latino immigrants and Burmese refugees.     

Building Solidarity Through Difference: A Practice Model for Critical Multicultural Organizing

ABSTRACT

Building solidarity is perhaps the most crucial, yet under-theorized, process in organizing for social change. Traditional models of union and neighborhood-based organizing associate solidarity with commonality, as opposed to difference. However, this traditional organizing model is being forced to adapt to an increasingly multicultural context, presenting a need for rethinking past practices and creating new frameworks for multicultural organizing. Theoretical work on the topic has been relatively detached from action on the ground, with few efforts to translate it into community organizing practice. This article develops a practice model for critical multicultural organizing drawing on a five-year qualitative, participatory evaluation of youth participation in grassroots community organizations. As well as offering insight into the efforts of young people to organize around neighborhood issues in largely low-income and racially diverse communities of color, the cases highlight inclusive practices that will help any organization become more sustainable and effective.     

Linking Professionalism and Community Organization:

A resurgence of community practice requires that the historical tension between professionalism and community organization be resolved. This paper proposes a scholar/advocate approach to forge a link between professionals and community organizations. The scholar/advocate approach facilitates social change, provides an opportunity for social work professionals to participate in community organizing, and empowers grassroots groups. The benefits and limitations of this method for professionals and community groups are illustrated by its application with three community organizations concerned about the urban poor and homeless. The paper argues that it is time for a resurgence of community-based social work and the development of new methods to attract students to this traditional, and still relevant, field.     

The Use of Dialogue in Community Organization Practice: Using Theory,Values, and Skills to Guide Group Decision-Making

The ability to engage diverse community participants in group dialogue to resolve differences, establish common ground, identify problems, set goals, and plan actions is an essential part of community organization. However, there are limited resources in the social work literature about how social work skills can best be used to facilitate group dialogue in this context. In this article, the theories and values associated with the use of group dialogue are discussed. The manner in which these skills are applied in community organizing is described. The interpersonal skills needed for facilitating group dialogue in community organization practice are also examined.     

Teaching Successful Community Practice in Social Work

ABSTRACT

This article identifies and addresses a severe problem in the management of community practice projects of students in their second and third year in the Undergraduate Social Work program at the University of Haifa School of Social Work; namely, the current binary evaluation method based on total success or failure of the project.

Using a systems approach, this study creates a framework by which to ensure effective and positive outcomes for community practice projects carried out by undergraduate social work students (Freund, Arkin & Saltman, 1999). This framework is unique in that it draws on knowledge gained from organizational and community theories, as well as instructional theories for teaching social work practice.

The proposed framework includes three components that describe the factors necessary to help transform the student's learning experience: the organization's characteristics, the student's resources, and the evaluative measures.

This inter-conceptual approach enhances the ability of the instructor, the student, and the organization to build an appropriate organizational foundation for students operating communal programs. The underlying assumption is that an integrative approach promotes a better understanding of the components essential for building and evaluating social plans conducted by social work students.     

Community College Programs for the Human Services

A national survey of 2-year human services programs in community colleges revealed the current status of these programs and identified significant trends in areas such as program number, curriculum design, standard-setting mechanisms, student composition and career paths, and faculty affiliation. Of particular interest was the relationship of these programs and their graduates to social work education and the social services job market. Among the principal findings were (a) these programs are in a period of renewed growth and (b) a need and an opportunity exist for the social work profession, particularly social work education, to be constructively involved in this level of education.