Community Social Work: Methods, Techniques, and Challenges

Posted on Aug 22, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

Community Social Work

Research Methods and Techniques

We can differentiate five methods or means of access to social reality:

  1. The historical method (assuming the temporality of the present, shaped by a specific historical path).
  2. The comparative method (based on the degree of complexity and structural analogy between the phenomena being compared).
  3. The rational critical method (which deals with the consideration of social goals, and rationality that is their own).
  4. The quantitative method (for those aspects of their subject of study that require or permit).
  5. The qualitative method (which addresses the meaning things have for us, trying to establish identities and differences).

The main research techniques of social science are applied according to the object of study and methodological perspective that adequately objeto. We can group them as follows:

  1. Quantitative techniques are designed to address the factual level of facts, and stand out: observation, structured interview techniques, and statistical surveys.
  2. Qualitative techniques aim to study not only the factuality of the facts, but the symbolic dimension of social interaction, and therefore link to the perspective we can identify them hermeneutically. Among these are life histories (descriptive studies that have experiences and ways of seeing the world of the person under investigation), discussion groups (which reveal the opinions, attitudes and motivations common to a group and give us knowledge about the systems of social representations) and open interviews or unstructured (in which the interviewee’s answers are not predefined by a questionnaire).
  3. Joint Research Action (JRA) comprises a set of techniques and procedures to encourage citizen participation and thus the community dynamics. The basic lines of the JRA are:
  1. Move from the subject/object to the subject/subject: the protagonists are the people affected, and it is they who must become the center of the process.
  2. Start of the needs and demands of people as they see them.
  3. Linking reflection with action that is conducive to rigorous self-diagnosis.
  4. Holistic perspective: the reality is multidimensional and therefore can be used different viewpoints and different methodological approaches.
  5. To know is to transform and empower: the ultimate goal is that the community are trained to overcome their dependence upon objective and take a leading role in managing their life trajectory.

Essential Purpose: Diagnosis, Community Development, and Evaluation

The caseworker must analyze in detail the following dimensions:

  1. Diagnosis of the problems to solve (analysis of structural inequalities, gaps or lack of personal skills for community living, community activities that serve to strengthen social ties and address structural challenges).
  2. Design of the type of community action to develop (people, deploy dynamic, community goals and individual goals).
  3. Implementation of the acquis communautaire (group dynamics, communication and negotiation processes, distribution of power).
  4. Maintenance of the action over time (redefinition of objectives, ongoing assessment, rehabilitation to the changing environment after the initial results of community action).
  5. Final evaluation and the report on the institutions responsible for the activity (distinguishing personal achievements and community outreach, the problems are not solved and new opportunities that have been generated).

Assumptions of the Intervention: Challenges for Community Social Worker

Dynamics of Social Action Community

There are two major problem areas for the professional work of community social worker:

  1. How to deal with the challenges stemming from the community dynamics, after commissioning.
  1. The integration of members.
  2. Disputes arising from the interaction itself.
  3. The division of labor, specialization in community action, and the consequent stratification and allocation of roles and status within the community.
  4. The conflict between cultural patterns of different people within the community, the culture itself that is generated internally and the interaction of culture and ways of origin of the environment in which to develop community action.
  5. Various forms of participation and communication with the problems arising from the absence of common patterns of communication and especially the incorrect use of verbal and nonverbal language between persons in the community.
  1. How to meet the challenges arising from the external action of the community. The social worker must be particularly attentive to changes that occur and the viability of established goals, and that sometimes can not achieve these goals in its entirety with the consequent frustration of the participants, who must know how to deal with.