Title – What is Community Work
Introduction
The aim of this paper stands in defining and presenting the role of the community worker through a direct investigation of their core values, skills and principles which openly operates through this complex profession, in order to support the achievement of social change.
So before I can commence to present the role of community work practice, I will have first to define the communal understanding of the term community, which is a multifaceted concept open to describe locality, local social system or a collection of interactions, human comportment’s that have sense and expectations between its members.
Bogardus(1961) defined the community system as a social group with some degree of ‘we feelings’ and living in a specified area, where O’Donnell(1992), viewed this notion as a correlation which induces a strong sense of shared cultural/ social identity or common interests which is not reliant on physical area/site. According to Ginsberg, community is “a group of social beings living a common life including all the infinite variety and complexity of relations which results, form that common life or constitute it.”
(Ginsberg,1979,pg 44)
Furthermore the concept of community development/ community work it’s very complex, and it’s seeking to address the structural inequality and forms of disadvantage that are present throughout our modern society.
Hope(1980) and Combat Poverty (2000)define the community development act as “… a process whereby those who are marginalised and excluded are enabled to gain in self-confidence, to join with others and to participate in actions to change their situation and tackle the problems…” and further Ploch(1976) complementing this definition, perceived the community development as “the active voluntary involvement of community residents in process to improve identifiable aspects of community life.(Ploch, 1976, pg 9)
So in this context, the community work process in general its concerned with the progress and empowerment of communities through enabling the dynamic involvement of people in exposing issues that may concern them as a group. This process could be achieved in a variety of context: with specific minority groups (e.g refugee, Roma gypsies /Travellers), in neighbourhoods, local authorities, partnership groups and state agencies.
In addition, the community work/ development sector in Ireland has attested its worth over the years, particularly in those times of fiscal declines, including the “downturn of the economy in the early 1970’s, 1980’s and the most recent in 2008, being an important core mechanism in action, that dealt openly with communities affected by poverty, unemployment and disadvantage, by clearly promoting the conception of a more viable and equal society”.
(CWC, 2009 ,pg2)
So looking at the community workers functions, we can see that those in general operates in teams, liaising closely with local authorities, Gardaí, teachers, social workers, probation officers and other agency.
Also any good community work practitioner must hold knowledge in social policies and modern society, followed by core skills and qualities such as: “capacity to connect with people from a broad range of backgrounds, innovation, negotiation, empowerment and activation, reflective practice, communication, commitment and enthusiasm, problem solving, leadership and partnership, integrity, flexibility, sensitivity and respect” and further an understanding of how public sector bodies work, being able to identify and pursue source of funding for those projects. (CWC, 2010,pg19-21)
Nevertheless this is a challenging role, exciting and at times frustrating, being a generic or specialised work, generic when the activity is displaced in a particular geographical location, focusing on working within the community to uncover the social-economic needs and other matters, by formulating and inserting policies/plans within a given development time frame of 3, 5 or 10 years.
Looking further into the Community Work /Development arena, it’s clear that the following values and practice principles which are listed below stands out as the guiding theories and beliefs, being the foundation of the community worker distinctive purpose and vision, being in place in order to ensure quality and ethical community work.
Collective action it’s seen as the process through which this trained professionals generates trustable channels for communication and support within the community groups/ classes, enabling those to develop knowledge, confidence and abilities to identify issues and needs within their community and further to address those through collective action.
Further the ‘Empowerment’ value according to Wilkinson(1986), standout as the fundamental principle in any community development, as this directly address the unequal distribution of power, enabling and liberating the community groups to become more analytical and creative, allowing those to have more control over the direction of their lives. (Wilkinson,1986,pg 8-12)
According to Paulo Freire(1973), this process of empowerment is a collaborative process in an open forum with mutual control over the curriculum, providing individuals and classes with “choices and ability to choose and to gain more control over resources they need’’ for reaching their development agendas within the community. (Scuftan,1996,pg260)
The Social Justice value is furthermore an essential element of community work, generating an important contribution towards a socially cohesive and equal society, where any discriminatory forms are challenged and people rights are promoted. According to Fraser (2009), achieving social justice in C.W field, is more about recognising and attempting to address/debate all forms of structural disadvantage, including inequality and discrimination by performing two main procedures, such as “reallocations of goods/ resources and using politics of recognition’’. (Fraser, 2009, pg 80-81)
Equality & Anti-Discrimination principles, stands on that all community workers has to value peoples equal access to services, valuing them for what they are by using ‘unconditional positive regard‘ and not because of their beliefs, actions and opinions, so therefore the key is acknowledgement, support and respect towards all humans being . Further through this context, they also have their own professional obligation to provide tools and guidance in order to challenge any form of societal exclusion / oppression towards individuals or groups.
Community ‘Participation’ is a paramount value in C.W.D and is about the meaningful and equal participation of all disadvantaged social groups who live through discrimination and marginalization in exerting their free view in ‘planning, decision making and action at all levels’. (cwc,10/03/2016)
According to Baker, ‘full inclusion and involvement of all societal groups in Irish society’ is the primary tool to address inequality. (Baker, 2000, pg 117)
In order for all this community work core values/ standards to be successful exercised, it’s important that those are supported, recognised and cherished by the community work professionals themselves, including other state affiliate bodies, as those will provide the measurable scale of community work effectiveness and quality. However an evaluative method for each intervention project is required, which come as a process that helps community work practitioners to see more clearly “it is a way of seeing” what they are doing and the depiction of the issues being challenged. (Van der Eyken, 1992)
In addition this evaluative practice its uninterrupted, “not just one-off development process, and its achieved by engaging all those parties through all the steps of the project (informing, planning and delivery), allowing those to disclose freely their issues and questions, actions that further creates a more transparent process to the public, allowing the community to ascertain what hasn’t work as well as what has’’. (Taylor et al., 2005, pg 2)
There is substantial affirmative evidence of impacts from Irish Community Work/Development programmes at national level in special in recent years, with well “over 180 CDPs and ten support agencies developed”; all in order to tackle the very problematic nature of poverty and disadvantage, by addressing directly through their objectives the need for social inclusion and integration.
(changingireland, 10/03/16)
Analysing the C.W.D schemes, we can see that many of those programmes have been established to meet certain community needs, generating different types of community development approaches such as: Community Development Programme, the Family and Community Services Resource Centres’ Programme and the Local Development Social Inclusion Programme and more others. Therefore viewing the existent data for Dublin area, we can see that most of this C.D.P are initiated in areas affected by poverty and unemployment like Tallaght-(TWCDI) including A.B.C programs: e.g Doodle Den/ Early Ears Services, Fatima-Rialto & Ballymun (BRL1997)- Regeneration Projects, North Clondalkin Community Development Project NCCDP(1990) and more others. Some of these projects have been running in their community through different stages since1990.
Leading from all this stated through this context, it is important to recognise that not all C.W.D programmes have been effectively, e.g Mate-Tricks- TWCDI which fails to deliver pro-social behaviour, despite that this came with positive feedback and good quality research documentation. So further monitoring and evaluating those community development programs its fundamental, as through this act the decision-making process is enhanced, allowing further the sensible transformation of any strategic plan functions by using efficiently the resources allocated, in order to achieve the development effort.
Conclusion
Community work/development is a process that challenge oppression and redistribution of wealth between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, where “personal issues become local projects, projects become causes, and causes become movements for change”, leading progressively to not only additional jobs, infrastructure and expenditure, but also to communities that are able to cope and sustain through time the need for change. (Cooke, 1996, pg 6)