Community Social Work: Challenges and Principles

The result of this process is that, by internalizing a philosophy that posits radical individualism as an experience of freedom, we are increasingly less able to choose and act. Each person is individually judged to have very little ability to act before market forces and organized groups pushing for guiding the economy and social development in a particular direction.

In this context, any community social work model must first consider the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to engage in professional activity. Secondly, we discuss the characteristics of a model of community social work in the 21st century.

Challenges for Community Social Workers in the 21st Century

To achieve the proposed objectives, the social worker must be trained and, in turn, train the participants, creating teams to internalize a set of best practices linked to equality, dignity, and the rights of all people, regardless of their status and origin. In this sense, they must acquire a body of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable and energize the community to properly address the development of their profession:

Skills Community Social Workers Must Acquire

• Know the ethical substratum of social interaction and community life.
• Know the history of social work, analyzing its theoretical development, specific techniques that have been developed, and results achieved.
• Know the dynamics of groups and community dynamics, exploring key theoretical models and techniques of organization, communication, and appropriate assessment.
• Know the environment in which you develop your business, diagnosing, planning, and evaluating each project phase.
• Know the institutional environment in which the community develops, which constitutes the potential for intervention.

Abilities Community Social Workers Must Acquire

• Develop the skills needed to perform various roles within the community.
• Develop skills related to a scientific approach to their business.
• Develop the ability to assess requirements for the generation, maintenance, and guidance of the collective efforts of the community.
• Develop sufficient flexibility to organize community dynamics based on the specific characteristics of the population.
• Work effectively in settings very different from your personal lifestyle and culture of origin.
• Adequately address the power dynamics that are always recorded in any group.

Attitudes Community Social Workers Need to Acquire

• Positively evaluate progressive community organization and the progress generated.
• Clarify and promote the spread of values of self-strengthening, cooperation, and altruism.
• Clearly distinguish the values, norms, and attitudes of individuals, groups, and communities that come from different backgrounds and cultural traditions.
• Objectively analyze their personal limitations and integrate into a multidisciplinary team.

Principles of a Model for Community Social Work

We can distinguish some principles that guide the work of community social workers, grouped into three areas:

In the field of diagnosis:

1. Scientific methodology: Carry out observation and analysis based on a rigorous scientific method, with special attention to designing questionnaires, interviews, observation in its various forms, or discussion groups.
2. Community involvement: This turns into a self-diagnosis so that the community is involved in analyzing its problems and, therefore, can become a privileged actor in changing it.
3. Realistic analysis of the institutional environment: The formal powers of institutions, as well as informal mechanisms of power operating in the environment, must be properly analyzed to plan achievable goals.
4. Establishment of appropriate targets for the community’s potential: This involves a realistic design of activities to achieve certain goals, so that unattainable achievements are not proposed.