Principles of Working with Communities - Assignment Example

Assignment 2: Lessons Learnt on Understanding How to Work with Communities Name Institution Professor Course Date Introduction Working for, in and with community is not easy. It requires a range of models, skills and approaches. Successful community work calls for identifiable types of values, reflection, information, skills, consciousness and attitudes. More so, the field of community work calls for constant description and reasoning. Effective community workers require to conduct community analysis across cultural, personal, physical and natural environment, conduct research about the community and form strategic partnerships aimed at helping in understanding communities. Besides understanding a community and employing powerful approaches to working with communities, community workers must demonstrate skills such as relationship, negotiation, influence and empowerment skills that are needed to facilitate effective community work. Drawing from the unit materials and topics, this report highlights lessons in the journey to understanding how to work with communities. Based on the first module that entails understanding communities, I have learnt that effective community work calls for maintenance of key principles linked to community work, defining a community and understanding the capacity of a community. Understanding Communities Understanding a community is important to community workers as it helps them to be in a position to work in the community. Failure to understand a given community denies a community worker the credibility needed to promote effective community work. Understanding a community involves getting to know the people in a community, their culture, relationships and concerns. Effective understanding of a community also includes understanding the physical assets, infrastructure, pattern of commerce and settlements, history, demographics, economics, government/politics, existing institutions and groups, attitudes and values and social structure of the community. Failure to comprehend a community also makes it hard for a community worker to connect with the members of the community and negotiate the ways of beginning and executing a community interventions and initiatives. Therefore, it is imperative for any community worker to understand a community, and assess the explicit temperament of the community. Everything thing that a community worker does in a community require him/her to be familiar with the people in the community, the history of the community and the issues affecting the community. Therefore, community workers must take effort and time to understand a community before getting on any community intervention or initiative. A good approach to understanding a community entails establishment of a community description and a record of the investigation and findings. This is a good approach aimed at gaining a detailed overview of a given community; understand its present, past and future Understanding what defines a community is paramount in promoting effective community work. According to Taylor, Wilkinson and Cheers (2008), community is an organic ordinary social group brought together through a sense of belonging established from day to day contacts. The strength of a community lies within its beliefs and values that bring the community together. Effective community works requires understanding of the intricate dynamics of the community in order to establish the points at which strategic initiatives and intervention can bring about the maximum long-term improvement to a community life. Smith (2009) asserts that unless a community worker gains the knowledge of a community uphold principles of working with a given community and understand the capacity of a community, community intervention and initiatives cannot be fruitful. Drawing from the film, ‘as it is in heaven’, listening to the needs and views of a community promote understanding of a community and effective community work. Empathetic listening entails comprehending each individual and understanding his or her experiences in life. The film stresses the togetherness of a community in caring for each other. With respect to principles of working with communities, I have learnt that effective community work calls for involvement of communities. A community worker must involve the members of a community in their intervention and initiatives. Involving members of a given community facilitates effective identification of problems affecting the community besides helping in designing, delivery and assessment of novel approaches to tackle the problems. Effective community work also calls for shared responsibility, respect for contributions made from diverse partners aimed at helping a community, equity and recognition for diversity. Community workers must also be ready to invest and adopt novel ways in delivery of community work and be transparent enough to gain the credibility from the community. Working with communities also requires comprehension of the capacity of a given community as well as ways to enhance community capacity. Community workers must focus on building the capacity of communities to help in tackling the community problems more effectively. This involves a major shift from focusing utterly in scarcity and deficit of resources to a perspective of assets embodying a positive and vibrant understanding of social, material, human and power resources. Community workers must understand the capacity of a community and establish valid and useful measures of capacity building. DiClemente, Crosby and Kegler (2012) assert that identification and evaluation of community capacity is essential to community workers who are willing to develop healthy communities. Community workers focus on promoting the capacity of communities to response to economic, health, social and economic issues. Communities are reinforced when community worker mobilise, honour and indentify the skills and gifts of the individual community members and are weakened when community workers focus in the needs, problems and deficiencies of the communities. How people view a community influences their views on community capacity and affects application of principles involved when working with communities. Approaches to Working with Communities Working with communities entails the procedure of helping ordinary people to enhance their own communities through performing collective action. Community work focuses on assisting people with collective interests to come together, assess their own needs and jointly work towards attaining the needs through establishing projects that enable them to gain support to meet their own needs. Community work focuses on allowing people to enhance their quality of life and obtain power over the processes that impact them (Clarke 2000). Community work is a process that calls for feasible approaches. These approaches encompass progressive practice models and conceptual models. Through the community practice approach, community workers have responsibilities and roles that require them to understand their community’s social circumstances and people, activate supporting networks, help community groups to form and evolve and establish links with community organisations. Drawing from the module two, I have learnt that there are several methods involved in the community work. These methods include service provision, social and political activism, community development, social impact assessment, events organisations and community or government combined local area planning. With respect to community practice, approaches to working with people include community-based research, strategic partnerships, community consultations, public meetings, and community analysis across cultural, economic, natural, personal and physical environments. Drawing from the course materials, the approaches to working with communities have evolved overtime in an uncoordinated way to tackle a certain difficulty or concern. It must be realised that features of these models are not wholly discrete, but instead demonstrate an extent of overlap between them. However, the models are an essential method of categorising principal approaches to community work. Some models emphasis care while others stress action. For instance, community work is focused on the model of care and it attempts to establish voluntary services and social network or are concerned about the welfare of residents (Keith, 1995).The community care model centres on establishing self-help concepts to address welfare and social needs. With respect to the community development model, community workers help groups to attain confidence and skills that are essential in improving the quality of life of community members. The community development model emphasizes on promoting self-help through educational means. With regard to community development models, community change can be realised through broad-based involvement by a broad spectrum of people at the local community level. This approach involves section of people including the underprivileged as well as those high in the power structure in identifying and addressing issues facing the community. The community development model stresses on democratic processes, voluntary cooperation, self-help, development of indigenous leadership and consensus approach. The community practitioner or worker in this approach takes the roles of a catalyst, coordinator, and teacher of ethical values and problem-solving skills. The community development model utilises communication and discussion to reach consensus as seen in some of the films watched in class. Social planning is another major approach to community work. This model stresses the problem-solving role. Drawing from the unit materials, social planning model assumes that community change in complex industrial setting calls for highly skilled and trained planners who can direct complex processes of change. The role of a community worker is essential as it facilitates identification and resolving of social problems. Based on the social planning model, a community worker is employed by a section of power structure an aspect that makes him/her serve the interests of the power structure, which can include community welfare council. Based on this model, the community worker gathers facts, assesses data and serves as a program facilitator, designer and implementer. Community involvement in this model varies from diminutive to substantial based on the attitudes of the community towards the problem being tackled. Others models include social action model where the community worker assumes the roles o agitator, negotiator, broker, partisan and advocate, and community education model that tries to redirect educational policy and practice in a way that benefits the community. Based on the course materials, the social/community planning approach to community work is the most common of the community work approaches. Drawing from the community work models, majority of community work is supported by the state, which define, regulate and supervise the work of community workers through its agencies. Drawing from the analysis of the approaches to working with communities, I have learnt that community work initiatives and interventions call for a given degree of training and experience. Skills in Working with communities Drawing from the course materials and case studies, there are a number of skills that are needed to facilitate working with and in communities. These skills include community decision making skills, community partnership skills, negotiation skills, leadership skills, organisational and planning skills, research skills and empowerment skills. Supportive community leadership is paramount in undertaking community work and more essentially community planning. Ideas of partnership working, community-based action research methods and community planning skills promote working with and in communities. Most community workers hold specialised skills and knowledge relevant to their areas of operation in the community. One of the most essential skills in community work is research skills. Research entails collecting and analysing data pertaining to a given community. Particularly, research skills are paramount in developing a community profile, assessing the needs of a community and evaluating the issues affecting a given community. Assessing materials such as census; health and economic data helps community workers in identifying the issues affecting a community and establishing means to address them. Working with and in communities requires interpersonal, partnership working, facilitation, communication and negotiation skills. Community partnership working skills implies the ability to work in partnership with others, solving issues of power in partnership and supporting relationships between community workers and members of the community (Clarke, 2000). With respect to partnership skills, community work is founded on supporting and working with groups to find solutions to issues facing a community. Partnership facilitates development of knowledge, confidence and skills that helps in addressing issues affecting a community collectively. Problems in a community call for negotiation and interpersonal skills. Negotiation entails establishing a capacity to resolve conflicts and disputes in a community. Productive negotiation calls for willingness to work in partnership with other people to attain solutions that are favourable to almost all members of a community. It must be noted that productive negotiation skills are crucial to the capacity to community people establish relationships. Negotiation and communication skills come into play where there are disputes and issues that need to be addressed in a community. Negotiation skills work in line with mediation skills that help people to address issues affecting them amicably. Influence or leadership skills facilitate community work. Leadership skills help community workers to be able to influence the community besides guiding decision making. Community workers require demonstrating good decision-making skills and ability to develop knowledge among community members. Leaders need to facilitate effective decision-making and promote consensus among community members. Empowerment skills are also among the range of skills required while working with communities as they facilitate knowledge development. Evidently, community work is about empowering individuals in a community and dealing with inequity in power distribution (Sastrow, 2009). Through empowerment skills, community workers help communities in taking active roles and gain knowledge that in turn help them address community issues and determine the direction their lives should take. Other skills that facilitate community work include organising skills, advocacy skills and planning skills. Working with communities and executing organising policies calls for a set of skills and behaviours that are measurable and observable. Community workers should gauge their capacity to establish rapport, be sensitive to diverse groups and effectiveness of their communication skills. The skills in working with communities are those embodied in decision-making, knowledge development, community planning, community leaders and community partnership. Conclusion Working with and in communities requires community practitioners to understand the communities they work for, and understand the perspectives and skills to working with these communities. Understanding communities is crucial because failure to do so makes it hard for community workers to connect with community members and executive community intervention and initiatives. To implement community initiatives and interventions effectively, community practitioners requires adopting different models or approaches. These models include community development and social planning model to mention but a few. Additionally, community work calls for major skills such as negotiation skills, empowerment skills, leadership skills and research skills that facilitate knowledge development, community partnership, effective decision-making and planning. References Clarke, S. (2000). Social work as community development: A management model for social change (2nd ed.). Aldershot, Hampshire, England ; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate DiClemente, R., Crosby, R., & Kegler, M.(2002). Emerging theories in health promotion practice and research: Strategies for improving public health. UK: John Wiley & Sons. Keith, P. (1995). Analysing community work: Its theory and practice. UK: McGraw-Hill Education. Sastrow, C.(2009). Introduction to social work and social welfare: Empowering people. UK: Cengage Learning. Taylor, J., Wilkinson, D., Cheers, B. (2008). Working with communities in Health and Human Services. Sydney: Oxford University Press. Read More