Community Work as Opposition: Tensions and Potentials in a Formalistic Welfare Context (original) (raw)
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Journal of Comparative Social Work
A number of tensions pertaining to social problems and human suffering become apparent when analysing community work in a Danish welfare setting. As a source for critical reflection, we discern some of these challenges, but also potentials, which relate not only to a Danish context, but to challenges in any highly institutionalized welfare system. Three community work social enterprises serve to exemplify the objectives of addressing social problems by fostering participation and empowerment. To enhance and include the voice of service users, the programmes attempt to cultivate human resources as opposed to perceived formalism and a subsequent diminishment of the potentials of community inclusion. The formalistic governmental agendas are perceived to be unable to appreciate the diversity of service users’ individual needs and social challenges, which produces conflicting prospects. Such a dichotomy between formalistic welfare practices and the ideals represented in the three enterpr...
Journal of Comparative Social Work
Community-oriented approaches in social work are highlighted in both social work literature and policy documents in post-financial crisis Europe, and in the Nordic welfare states where professionalized bureaucracy, universal benefits and institutionalized social work have been the norm. The aim of this article is to explore social workers’ experiences of role changes in the transition to a more community-oriented approach, characterized by ambulatory work, the facilitation of local resources, multi-disciplinary collaboration and user participation. The empirical data consists of qualitative data from two cases: a political reform in the Netherlands (The Social Support Act), and a user-initialized project in Norway. Ten social workers from nine different organizations were interviewed in the Netherlands, and four social workers from one community-based project in Norway. We analysed these as a multiple case study of a transformation towards community-based practice, but one in which ...
-a category of disadvantaged people -unorganized groupment of people, they need a help -a community of interests -organised interest association, that express its interests and work on them -a service community -organised connection inhabitants of community, that are able afford a help with a network of professional organizations -a municipality -that is mean as social space, in which are built relations between providers of services and disadvantaged, who are able establis their interests and support their realisations by an activity/action Social work (Popple, 1995; Barker, 1987; Hartl, 1993 Hartl, , 1997 consider as community rather groupment of people, who have common characteristics, no expect with existing sens of community, fellings of solidarity etc. Objectives of community work are to mobilise this facts.
Social Inclusion
By the end of the 20th century, deinstitutionalisation had become a pervasive trend in the Western world. This thematic issue discusses how successful deinstitutionalisation has been in enabling dignified and safe living with necessary services in local communities. It contributes to an understanding of the history and phases of deinstitutionalisation and ‘home turn’ policies, and sheds light on the grassroots‐level of home‐ and community‐based work at the margins of welfare, hitherto little researched. The latter includes grassroots work to implement the Housing First approach to homelessness, commonly portrayed as a means of social inclusion, worker–client interactions during home visits and in the local community, as well as close inspections of what ‘housing support’ may actually entail in terms of care, discipline and service user participation.
The Community Work Programme: Building a Society that Works
ILO Working Paper 149, 2013
In the context of a global jobs crisis, there is renewed interest in the role of public employment in providing work opportunities even where markets are unable to do so. This context has also seen a range of forms of innovation in public employment, with new forms of work and new approaches to implementation delivering different kinds of outcomes. The Community Work Programme in South Africa is an example of such innovation. The CWP was designed to use public employment as an instrument of community development, and uses participatory local processes to identify work that needs to be done to improve the quality of life in poor communities. This has resulted in a multi-sectoral work menu with a strong emphasis on care, food security, community safety and a range of other work activities. The inclusion of work in the social sector within a public employment programme creates new ways of strengthening social outcomes. The CWP also differs from other public employment programmes with its focus on providing ongoing access to part-time work for those who need it at local level, providing an income floor in ways that draw from lessons of social protection. This design feature is a specific response to the structural nature of unemployment in South Africa, which means that for many participants, there is no easy exit from public employment into other economic opportunities; instead, the CWP supplements as well as strengthening their other livelihood strategies. The Community Work Programme was an outcome of a strategy process commissioned by the South African Presidency in 2007 that aimed to strengthen economic development strategies targeted at the poor. This process recognized that in a context of deep structural inequality and unemployment, strategies were needed that could enable economic participation even where markets are unable to do so. This formed part of the rationale for scaling up South Africa’s existing commitments to public employment, with the CWP also designed to use public employment as an instrument of community development. The CWP is still a relatively new programme, institutionalized in the Department of Co-operative Governance in South African since April 2010. This article examines the policy rationale for the CWP, describes its key design features and explores the forms of local innovation to which it is giving rise, in relation to the forms of work undertaken and the associated community development outcomes. It also explores some of the challenges of implementation and the policy questions to which this innovation in public employment is giving rise.
Rediscovering Community Social Work
Social Work, 2014
I want to make the case for rediscovering community social work based on the ontological primacy of the "we". In doing so, I follow closely the writings of Jean Luc Nancy and focus particularly on his 'The Inoperative Community' (1991). It's consideration for social work demands the adaptation of an entirely new lens of analysis. Nancy's difficult exposition of community provides us with a tremendous opportunity to consider community in radically new ways for social work. Although generally Nancy does not make direct links between his philosophical observations and concrete applications within 'The Inoperative Community', it will, nonetheless, become clear that there is, indeed, such a connection that can be worked through to the benefit of fields of research such as social work.
COMMUNITY WORK IN PRACTICE (Part 2)
Community Work, 2019
Community work for urban transformation is something that have very different perspectives according to the discipline that study it. From perspectives of the theories and the practices it is possible to describe different parts that allow us to a better understand of this practice in urban transformation. The following articles are trying to do that explaining 4 complementary understanding of community work, giving a general but useful description and framework of this field. Starting from the analysis of the theory it will ends in supposing something that for us is needed in today's communities and urban transformation. This work has been developed during my Erasmus in the autumn semester at Malmö Universitet in the course of "Community Work in Urban Transformation" and successively improved and enriched by my self in order to create some basis that can be helpful in community work studies. The work has been divided in 4 part: community work as a planning tool; community work in practice; acting in community work; a model for community work.
First and last and always: streetwork as a methodology for radical community social work practice
Critical and Radical Social Work
This conceptual article aims to introduce and explore the practice of social streetwork. Streetwork is located as a historical professional discourse that has contemporary relevance for a rapidly changing and globalised world. As a practice discourse, streetwork occurs across a range of communitybased helping professions, including social work, youth work and community work. The social work profession is increasingly becoming clinical and situated within statutory organisations, placing a greater emphasis on outcome-based targets, rather than building relationships. As a result of austerity, traditional youth workers are becoming invisible, often moving into statutory education settings and complex needs welfare agencies. This article will argue that for the broad helping professions to remain relevant, we must engage with vulnerable and complex populations where we find them – at the street level – promoting a direct practice of social justice at a microlevel. Within this discussio...