INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE WITH COMMUNITIES

1. What is community?
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as norms, religion,
values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given
geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighbourhood) or in virtual space through
communication platforms.

Community The word "community" is derived from Latin word “communitas” (meaning the
same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means “common, public, shared by all or
many” (encyclopedia).

Types of community
1) Location-based Communities: range from the local neighbourhood, suburb,
village, town or city, region, nation or even the planet as a whole. These are also called
communities of place.
2) Identity-based Communities: range from the local clique, sub-culture, ethnic
group, religious, multicultural or pluralistic civilization, or the global community cultures of
today. They may be included as communities of need or identity, such as disabled
persons or elderly people.
3) Organizationally based Communities: range from communities organized
informally around family or network-based guilds and associations to more formal
incorporated associations, political decision making structures, economic enterprises, or
professional associations at a small, national or international scale.

2. Community Organizing Perspectives

1. Systems Perspective
a community is similar to a living creature, comprising different parts that represent
specialized functions, activities, or interests, each operating within specific boundaries to
meet community needs. For example, schools focus on education, the transportation sector
focuses on moving people and products,
 2. Social Perspective
describing the social and political networks that link individuals, community organizations, and
leaders. Understanding these networks is critical to planning efforts in engagement. For
example, tracing social ties among individuals may help engagement leaders to identify a
community‘s leadership, understand its behavior patterns, identify its high-risk groups, and
strengthen its networks (Minkler et al., 1997).

3. Virtual Perspective Some communities map onto geographically defined areas, but
today, individuals rely more and more on computer-mediated communications to
access information, Examples of computermediated forms of communication include
email, instant or text messaging, e-chat rooms, and social networking sites such as
Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter

4. Individual Perspective
Individuals have their own sense of community membership that is beyond the definitions of
community applied by researchers and engagement leaders. Moreover, they may have a
sense of belonging to more than one community. In addition, their sense of membership can
change over time and may affect their participation in community activities (Minkler et al.,
2004).

B. FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNITY

1. Production, Distribution, consumption: The community provides its members with the
means to make a living. This may be agriculture, industry, or services.

2. Socialization: The community has means by which it instills its norms and values in its
members. This may be tradition, modeling, and/or formal education.

3. Social Control: The community has the means to enforce adherence to community
values. This may be group pressure to to conform and/or formal laws.

4. Social Participation: The community fulfills the need for companionship. This may occur
in a neighborhood, church, business, or other group.

5. Mutual Support: The community enables its members to cooperate to accomplish tasks
too large or too urgent to be handled by a single person. Supporting a community hospital with
tax dollars and donations is an example of people cooperating to accomplish the task of health
care.
How Community Involvement Influences Socialization
Physical Factors: population, noise, community design/arrangement
and of housing, play settings. (Noise coming from the population)

Social and Personal Factors: The neighborhood setting, patterns of community interaction.

The Community as a Support System

The community can serve as a support system for families. It can provide informal support, when
families watch each others children. Or it can be formal support, like when it helps family through
publicly or privately funded community services.

Supportive Services (Child and Family): These include educational programs, counseling
services, health services, policies related to demographic changes, employment training, and
community development projects. These services maintain the health, education, and welfare of
the community.

Rehabilitative Services (Correction, Mental Health, Special Needs): These services enable or
restore people's ability to participate in the community effectively.