Community Social Work: Methods, Objectives, and Tools
The goals addressed are mainly educational or therapeutic. Professionals must possess the appropriate skills and techniques necessary for group management, including:
- A warm relationship
- Fostering relationships between group members
- Effective verbal communication
- Understanding non-verbal communication
- Intentional choice of the medium, environment, and their interaction
This method is reminiscent of the sociology of small groups and utilizes social research techniques such as participant observation (interpretation of nonverbal communication within the group), while also considering newsgroups. This allows for the definition of initial positions held by members.
Community Method
The community method poses a more complex methodological level. The group itself is the center of social action. The objective is the creation and maintenance of a cohesive, participatory, and dynamic environment to allow for the implementation of social development projects. Sharing a common objective is the engine of all associative action, and social workers should focus their activity on driving the group towards the proposed end.
This methodological development originates from Community Organization, born in the context of the profession in the United States and Community Development programs linked to United Nations programs aimed at improving the social, economic, and cultural aspects of communities in different parts of the world.
The basic idea of both applications is that the program is born and developed from within the community, not from outside. The social worker involves all components of the community in implementing the project by mobilizing all possible resources.
The Barclay Report of 1982 defined formal social work as based on the problems affecting an individual or group and the responsibilities and resources of social services departments and voluntary organizations. It seeks to support and train local networks of formal and informal relationships that constitute our basic definition of community, as well as the strength of the community of interests of the client.
Dumas and Seguier defined three processes in Community action:
- Awareness
- Organization and mobilization
- Essential to achieve real transforming action
The process of collective organization links all transactions by which a latent group, a fraction of the population with common interests, becomes an efficiently organized group, i.e., able to promote its interests.
Thus, the group moves independently, with a desire shared by its members and reflected in each of the actions taken.
Participatory Research in Community Social Work
To carry out Community Social Work, one of the best tools is participatory research: to discover the needs, develop a unified will, share tasks, set goals and priorities, keep the organization alive, and establish appropriate communication channels. It is essential to achieve real transforming action.
The process of collective organization links all transactions by which a latent group, a fraction of the population with common interests, becomes an efficiently organized group that is capable of promoting their interests.
Thus, the group moves autonomously, with a desire shared by its members and reflected in each of the actions taken. To carry out Community Social Work, one of the best tools is participatory research: to discover the needs, develop the unified will, share tasks, set goals and priorities, keep the organization alive, and establish appropriate communication channels.