Introduction to Social work with

communities DSWK535
By
Mukurazhizha Rudo
Lecture 1: Introduction to social work with
communities
September-December 2022
MSU School of Social Work
 intro
• The field of social work can be classified into three
categories of practice: macro , mezzo and micro social
work.
• Macro-level social workers work at the community and
systems-level.
 What is community practise
• Macro practice is identified as social work with
communities, organizations or change strategies.
• Social workers in macro practice engage in planning,
organizing, development, collaboration, leadership, policy
practice, advocacy, and evaluation
• macro practice is professionally guided intervention
designed to bring about change in organizational,
community, and policy arenas.
 What is macro practise
• To engage in macro practice to help a client who is
addicted to alcohol, for example, the social worker must
understand the problem (alcoholism), the background of
the person addicted, the population (e.g., elderly, retired
males), and the arena (community or organization) within
which the problem occurs.
 What is macro practise
• Macro-level social work does not typically involve working directly with
individual clients in a patient-social worker relationship. However, the social
workers may work with individual community members as part of research or
interventions designed to address large-scale problems affecting the community.
• Macro social work may also involve organizing community efforts, leading
community development initiatives or planning interventions to reduce poverty,
increase literacy or end human trafficking. Social workers practicing at the
macro level may also be involved in advocacy and policy work, from grassroots
advocacy to large-scale political lobbying.
• Macro activities go beyond individual interventions but are often based on
needs, problems, issues, and concerns identified in the course of working
oneto-one with service recipients Rothman, Erlich, and Tropman (2008)
 What is a community?
• According to Zastrow , (2010) the community is
synonymous with people that shared common interests,
but human beings are dynamic and think rationally
• The community is a sociological term that established an
environment that will accommodate different people
operating on the basis of mutual concern.
 Defining Communities
• Community is a number of people who have something in
common with one another that connects them in some way and
that distinguishes them from others , Ashman (2007)
• Community work is a conscious process of social work
concerned with meeting of broad needs and resources in a
particular community.
What is Community?
 What is Community?
• Said to have roots in Judeo-Christianity understanding community to
denote a sense of belonging.
• A highly contestable concept (Williams, 1983)
• Describes a set of relationships (Williams, 1983)
• Harmony
• Solidarity
• Shared sense of place
• Common bonding
• All these challenged by Nancy (1991) who views community to be a
concept based on shared experiences
 What is Community?
Community can be summed up by the following terms:
• Relationship
• Geographical location
• Improved environment for productivity
• Human value
• Repeated services/activities
 What is Community Work?
• The concept „community social work‟ grew up in the
1970s and 1980s in Britain and gained common currency
following the publication of the Barclay Report in 1982.
• Even though there is uncertainty in using terms to denote
the community work approaches to social work practice,
the term community social work‟ is used by several
authors.
 What is Community Work
• “community work within social work‟ (Thomas,1983), „
• social work practice with communities‟ (Glison et.al., 2012
and Pawar, 2014)
• community-orientated social work‟ (Forde and Lynch,
2014)
• social work in the communities‟ (Teater and Baldwin
2012)
• social work community practice‟ (Rothman and Zald in
Taylor and Roberts, 2013 and Chow, 2015),
• community-based social work (Roivainen, 2004),
• Dunham (1986) suggest that community work is a
conscious process of social work concerned with any or
all of the following objectives:

• The meeting of broad needs and bringing about and

maintaining adjustments between needs and resources in
a particular community.
• Helping people to deal more effectively with their
problems and objectives by helping them develop,
strengthen and maintain qualities of participation, self-
direction and cooperation.

• Bringing about change in community and group

relationships and in the distribution of decision making
power.
• Brager and Specht (1976) indicate that community work is
a method of intervention whereby individuals, groups and
organisations engage in planned action to influence social
problems.

• It is concerned with the enrichment, development or

change of social institutions and involves two major
related processes i.e
 What is community work
• The term „community social work‟ is typically associated
with ideas of self-help, voluntarism and facilitating access
to local services (Forde and Lynch, 2014).
• It focuses on the needs of small communities, and, allied
with a range of social care services, seeks to engage
those communities in providing locally responsive
services that meet identified needs (Payne, 2005).
 What is Community Work?
• Community social work is one of the methods of social
work that make social work discernible from other
sciences because of its focus on the great social issues of
society (Glisson, 1994)
• It focuses on the inter-relationship with and support for
formal and informal networks in order to address
individual and group problems and to prevent problems
from arising in the first place (Holiček and Baldwin in
Leskošek, 2009).
What is Community Social Work
• from whats wrong to whats strong
• Community practice is a generic term describing forms of practice
aimed at describing interventions aimed ameliorating problems of
individuals and communities at the macro or community level
• It involves the following:
o establish priorities as locally as possible to fit local circumstances
(Smale e al., 1988)
o Challenging the way community problems are identified and
explained
What is Community Social Work
o Organising collective action to mount community
resistance to initiatives which it opposes and influence
policy making
o developing accessible and effective services to meet local
needs
o Enhance social capital in order to counter community
break down (Stepney & Popple, 2008)
o Promoting community action (Lee, 1999)
 Historical Foundations of
Community Work
• In the UK community work rose in the 1950s when the
Younghusband Report of 1959 recognised it as a third
method of social work alongside case work and group
work (Kuenster, 1961)
• Due to deepening economic crisis in the UK, the UK
government introduced a cocktail of community based
interventions (Popple, 1985).
• Such major interventions were the;
o The urban planning programme
o National community development project
 Historical Foundations of Community Work
• In the 1980s the UK community social work was further
developed through the Barclay report
• The report raised alarm on the focus of social work on
being reactive and targeting the ‘at risk’ negating being
holistic and proactive focusing on families and
communities
 Historical Foundations of Community Work

• In the USA community social work can be traced back to

the early settlement movements
• The following approaches were developed in the US:
o community organising
o Locality development
o Social action
o Urban planning
 Historical Foundations of Community Work

• Despite the use of community practice in social work,

social work practice in the US has remained largely
clinical in nature focusing on mental health (Gilbelman,
1999; Ginsberg, 2005)
• Community practice is said to be marginal rather than
being a mainstream method of social work.
• Is community practice marginal in Zimbabwe???
• Is social work in Zimbabwe largely clinical
• In Zimbabwe community work it is a borrowed concept
from the developed countries like England.
• Community work in Zimbabwe emerged with
missionaries, they built health facilities which helped to
curb myriad diseases that affected the communities at
large e.g. malaria, cholera and others.
• They also built education facilities to provide education to
the society at large e.g. Inyati mission and Bernard Mzeki.
• Missionaries brought aspect of religion to develop spiritual
understanding in the community. Biesteck (1957) asserts
 Community Work Theories
• Community development theory
• Empowerment theory
• Ecological systems theory
• Naïve consciousness theory
• Social action theory
• Social and economic theory
 Principles of Community Work
• There is need for a guiding principle and values upon
which the community members exist for peaceful co-
existence and development (Rhonda Phillips & Pittman,
2009).
• The guiding principles and values are most important to a
social worker who has to firstly respect those of the
community and secondly respect those from their
profession.
 Principles of Community Work
Community Development Exchange (1985) gives the
following principles:
• Holistic approach to development needs
• Community development should be a process
• It should be empowering
• It should consider environment issues
• It should be sustainable
• It should partner with stakeholders.
 Principles of Community Work
• The following authors Mathie & Cunningham, 2003;
Wates, 2014; (Wandersman, 1981; Watson-Thompson,
Fawcett and Schultz, 2008) identify the following
principles of Community practice:
• People oriented
• Framework
• Mobilisation
• Participation
• Empowerment
 Principles of Community Work
• Partnerships
• Motivation
• Sustainability
• Social justice
• Ethical conduct
 Advantages of Community Practice
• Build social capital
• Enhance the public understanding of social work role
(Stepney & Popple, 2008)
• Strengthens community norms for engagement
• Deepens commitment and removes barriers and
constraints o change
• Draws upon local strengths
• Engages both the formal and informal networks (Lee &
Todd, 2006)
Community Practice Approaches
• Approaches are models
The following are the major Community practice
approaches
• Community organising
• Locality development
• Social action
• Social planning
• Rothman and Tropman (1995) identifies only the following
as models of community practice: locality development,
 SOCIAL ACTION (inside -out)

• According to Rathman the social action model assumes one

segment of the community i s being overlooked or bypassed.
• The focus of this model on organising those segments of the
community to stand up for their right, to demand that their
needs and concerns be addressed.
• Social action aims to promote collective action to challenge
existing socio-political and economic structures and processes.
 Advantages
• people work together to change the conditions that directly affect
them in their daily lives.
• it promotes social justice, democracy and the redistributive of
power, resources and decision.
• it can empower and energise populations that have traditionally
been powerless or haven't understand their potential for existing.
• it can unify communities - collective action brings people together
in the way that many collaborative activities do. it creates a spirit of
shared effort and shared passion and birds individuals into a
community of shared purpose.
 advantages

• it can motivate people to take other kinds of positive action.

• it can be the beginning of a process that ends in a more unified
larger community.
• it can lead to long term positive social change.
• it may be seen as morally necessary: people generally engage
in it because they believe their cause is right and may see it as
their moral duty to do something about it.
 Disadvantage

• it can be dangerous at times as

evidenced in many bloody beatings at
the hands of police during strikes.
 Social Planning
• It usually takes the top down approach.
• Many of the social programs carried out are a
requirement for community participation in planning and
implementation of programs and initiatives.
• It emphasizes on solving specific social problems such
as lack of adequate housing or very high crime rate. It is
often initiated but community officials or planners or as
the result of state or federal programs.
 Social planning
• it is concerned with the assessment of community needs
and problems and the systematic, planning of strategies
for meeting them.
• It comprises the analysis of social condition, policies and
agency services, the design of source programmes and
the mobilisation of appropriate resources and the
implantation and evaluation of services and programmes.
 Advantages

• participation carries with it feelings of ownership and

builds a strong base of intervention in the community.
• it ensures that the intervention will have more credibility
in all segments of the community.
• it teaches skills which last for beyond the planning
process.
• it involves important players from outset, it provides any
opportunity for often disenfranchised groups to be heard.
• it implies respect for everyone in the community.
 Disadvantages

• the planning process may take a long

time.
• ignorance of the community.
• the initiatives may affect those who would
not have created it.
 
 Community Work
• it focuses on community building by improving the process by
which things get done for example, it emphasises the ideas of
community competency the ability of the community to solve its
own problems by learning skills such as group facilitation and
critically thinking that are crucial to community work.
• It is self help participatory model. it emphasizes self help,
mutual support, the building up of neighbourhood integration ,
the development of neighbourhood capacities for problem
solving and self representation and the promotion of collective
action to bring a community preferences to the attention of
political decision making.
 Advantages

• Partnership - recognising many agencies to contribute to

community learning and development and should work
together.
• it increases the ability of individuals and groups to influence
community circumstances.
• it supports people to take part in decision making.
• equal opportunity and anti-discriminatory, as it recognises that
some people have restricted opportunities and influence..
• it benefits the community through voluntary labour.
 
 Disadvantages

• no one actually likes voluntary labour.

• community development takes time.
• Disadvantaged communities have to be persuaded
to participate and their natural suspicion leads
them back thus it is always been behind schedule.
 Social Planning
• Includes processes engaged in by citizens, advocacy
groups, advocate planners, to design projects,
programmes and services for specific neighbourhoods
• Coordination of services
• Design of more effective services
• Introduction of major reforms of human service systems
• Social planning obviously involves program development,
program coordination and program evaluation
 Community Organising
• Processes of empowerment that engage citizens in
projects to change their social, political and economic
conditions
• It includes the following;
o community organising
o Organising against unjust policies and/or institutions
o Consensus organising
o Developing local leadership
o Coalition building
 Community Organising
• Activities and interventions of community organising often
include:
• Citizen participation
• Coordinating efforts between agencies or groups
• Public relations and public education
• Research
• Planning
 Community Organising
• “Community organisation is an intervention process used
by social workers and other professionals to help
individuals, groups, and collectives of people with
common interests or from the same geographic areas to
deal with social problems and to enhance social wellbeing
through planned collective action…” (Barker, 2003)
 Community Organising
• The methods employed include but not limited to:
- Identifying problem areas
- Analysing causes
- Formulating plans
- Developing strategies
- Mobilising necessary resources
- Identifying and recruiting community leaders
 Locality development
• Process focusing on enabling and empowering citizens to
work in united ways to change their lives and environment
and improve their economic conditions, quality of life,
opportunity structures
• The wok include social, community and economic
development
• More recently strategies of sustainable development were
added.
• Locality development is sometimes known as community
development (Zastrow, 2013).
 Locality development
• The following themes are associated with LD:
- Democratic procedures
- Consensus building approach
- Voluntary cooperation
- Development of indigenous leadership
- Self-help
 Locality development
• Roles of social work practitioner include but not limited to:
- Catalysts for development
- Coordinators
- Enablers
- Teachers of problem solving skills
 Social action
• Actions taken by groups to effect social, economic and
political changes in particular to achieve the following:
o Expand human rights
o Promote social justice
o Enhance human capacities
o Create expanded opportunities
 Social action
• The change efforts include but not limited to:
o Political and social action
o Legislative and media advocacy
o Popular education
o Action research
o Coalition building and maintenance
o Participation in social movements embracing levels of
change from local to global (Weil, 1994)
 History of Paulo Freire

• People are not machines or objects that can be worked

on like motor cars. They have to be worked with
• Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and policy maker
largely credited as the father of many of the concepts that
make up Development Education
• Born into an impoverished family, Freire was well
acquainted with the effects of socio-economic status on
education and every day life at a young age.
 conscientisation
❖Conscientization is an ongoing process by which a learner
moves toward critical consciousness.
❖Conscientization means breaking through prevailing
mythologies to reach new levels of awareness in particular,
awareness of oppression, being an “object” in a world
where only subjects have power.
❖This process of Conscientization involves identifying
contradictions in experience through dialogue and
becoming a “subject other oppressed subjects –that’ is
becoming part of the process of changing the world”
 KEY POINTS TO FREIRE’S THEORY
❖His theory maintains that a person lives often in no
historical times, has no body, passions, emotion
❖The overall impression is that Freire is being
asked to provide a universal answer to all the
educational problems of our societies
❖Since the concept of oppression is an important
concept in Freire’s social philosophy, it is
unfortunate that he does not give more adequate
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 Critics of Paulo Freire’s theory
❖No criteria was given for judging what
objective exploitation would be or what a
responsible person would do.
❖Most conscious raising programs alone or in
combination with skill transmission
programs ,have not achieved expected social
changes and it seems that
 conti
• “Conscientazation and what its all about ’’ New
Internationalist , Jun 1974 maintained that
CONSCIENTIZATION and PAULO FREIRE are
currently the most trendy words in the whole
development debate. Some see conscientization
almost as a new religion with Paulo as the high
priest. Others see it as just so much hot air with
Freire as chief windbag
 theoratical frameworks
• - Empowerment theory
• - Ecological systems theory
• - Naïve consciousness
 ecological systems theory
• One theory that seems to have considerable
relevance at both the micro and macro levels is
systems theory. Systems theory contends that there
are multiple parts of any entity, whether it is a group,
an organization, or a community. Entities can be best
understood as systems with interconnecting
components, and certain common principles help in
understanding systems, whether they are as large as
an international corporation or as small as a family.
There are resources the system needs in order to
 Assessments through
assignments
1. Examine the concept of locality development as an
approach to community practice?
2. Give an analysis of the social planning model as an
approach of community work?
3. Explain the social action model as a key approach to
macro-practice?
 Assessments through assignments
Guidance on question 1-3 expected content inclusion
• Assumptions of the approach
• Theoretical underpinnings of each model
• Roles of the social worker in each model
• Interventions and activities associated with each model
• Merits and demerits of each model
 Assessments through
assignments
4. “The meaning of the terms community and community
practice are shrouded in a mystery”. Discuss
5. Elaborate on the following theories applicable to
community practice:
• -Community Development theory
• - Empowerment theory
• - Ecological systems theory
• - Naïve consciousness
 Assessments through
assignments
6. Elaborate on the following theories applicable to
community practice:
• Building Social Capital
• Social and Economic theory
• Social Action Theory
 Assessments through
assignments
7. Sustainability is a cornerstone of successful social work
with communities practice. Discuss the extent to which the
statement is true.
Guidance
- Give historical foundations to sustainability
- Strategies of sustainability
- Definitions and importance
- Attainability, challenges and opportunities of sustainability
 Assessments through
assignments
8. Compare and contrast the Longwe and Moser
frameworks of gender analysis?
 Assessments through
assignments
• More questions next week
 The End of Lecture 1 & 2
• The lectures basically covered the following
• The discourse around the meaning of community
• Defining community practice
• The three models/approaches of community practice
which are:
- Locality development
- Social planning
- Social action
• Group 1: The roles of a social worker in community
practice
• Group 2: The requisite skills for community work
• Group 3: Examine the following theories applicable to
community practice
• Group 4:
• Thank you for your time and allowing me to share with
you the little that I know about the Social Work
Profession, wish you all the best in the forth coming
sessional exams .
• mazvita