Understanding Community - Essay Example

Journal Report----Community Student’s Name Instructor Institution Course Date Executive Summary The aspect of community, development and health has become tacit and should be understood from myriad of perspectives. From the one hand, understanding process of community involvement helps in bridging social, economic and health related gaps that would have been created had the services to the community withdrawn. From the other hand, it has to be understood that the situation in which community development occurs is a determiner of how such community can be shaped by a multipart web of political, economic and social forces that operate at the regional, community and even national levels. Providing services for the community is not only helping in the understanding of the community served but can be a platform through which one can describe positive impact of servicing. The outcome of competence, commitment and connection makes one understand the actual challenges and historical injustices that a given community has been exposed to. Module One: Understanding Community Understanding community remains to be a multifaceted area of study. It actually stretches beyond just assessing reasons why people work together. One critical aspect that has been acquired through the lessoning is ‘Personal Problems and Public Issues.’ In most cases, there are a number of issues that community goes through however; these have often been caused by failure or breakdown in a certain part of community. However, there is need, despite these challenges, to work to develop community-based health and different human-related services especially when one is looking for rewarding experience. Secondly, the aspect of social care is another aspect that needs critical conceptualization. While it has been defined as any arrangement within the social setup other than market, it has been learnt that the definition’s scope should entail aspects such as the primary functions that people provide; of importance being the social, material and emotional wellbeing for every citizen. This is the reason why assessment the aspect of “Why work with communities” remains integral part of the lesson learnt since it helps in realizing factors that affect health and wellbeing of people. This is actually what forms the web or the link between community, health and wellbeing. However, there are some issues that need to be connected to community and working for the community. It is the understanding that in as much as one gains valuable experience, there are some issues inherent in working with the community. First, there has to be clear understanding of the environment in which community development occurs or how such environment can be shaped. Understanding of community is also another element that defines commitment of service to the people. The three aspects; community of place, community of interest and community as a social system helps in defining the scope of engagement one can have to the community. Relating these aspects to the community interaction theory, one has to understand community as structures and processes that can help in building relationships and networks that integrate different aspects together. People should see this theory in terms of services to the community. That is, community work is about engaging with people so that the structures and processes should be harmonized. Importantly are the six elements according to Wilkinson where local society, community field, structures and power networks among others form integral parts of works to the society. Among these elements, community field remains encompassing in two critical ways; on the one hand, it helps service providers, community and people to be together in solving development problems of the whole community. On the other hand, it ensures that people have identified the problems in the society and solve them amicably prioritizing the problems as per people’s needs. However, there is still need for well-defined structures that helps in bringing together community structures such (specifically; the factionalised, segmented, amorphous and integrated), especially when factors such as factionalised is concerned. There is need to design our structures and services to the community so that division of people can be taken care of more so socio-economic status, culture and different political views. Community service has been interpreted differently, especially from the perspective of lecture three where community work is linked to aboriginal Australian perspective. Indigenous Australian communities have had different challenges and community workers need to realize that these groups of people have to be understood from the perspective of kinship, land and responsibility. For long, there have been segregation expressed to the community and as a result, this lesson imparts the knowledge that every individual, especially the indigenous have their own places and that has to be respected. Secondly, sense of place and belonging is one area that service work should take note of while dealing with these groups of people. Based on this understanding, the responsibility therefore, as community worker is twofold. First, one needs to understand as much as possible, special needs and experiences that are needed to interact with the aboriginals. As Taylor et al. (2008) put it, this information are available in books, social interactions and history. Secondly, a framework is needed to understand the scope of racial segregation and prejudices that have affected the group. This is basically what constitutes community capacity as elaborated in lecture four. According to Bauman (2000), Aboriginal community have had challenges with resources and as a community worker, community capacity is engaging people in development of power, critical reflection and interagency networks. Module Two: Approaches to Community Approaches to community are embedded on four critical aspects; instrumental, contributions, community empowerment and developmental. Among the four aspects, empowerment approach remains to be one which has greatly invoked my strong emotion especially to the service of the community. It is important from this approach that community needs our service and in rendering such services, there is need to emphasise on process of participation so that transformative change(s) can be brought to the community. In so doing, one has a chance for personal development and creation of self-consciousness in raising social actions. However, it is worth noting, from lessons on lecture five that as far as approaches to community is concerned, there is need to integrate activities that support community especially when we need them to take higher roles (Clarke, 2000). This view is consistent with one of the criticism of approaches to community; that the process of empowerment should be done carefully so that empowering one group do not affect another or if done, such has to be done diplomatically. Interactional development on the other hand, is one area learnt that provide direct relationship between community and reasons for working for the community. Interactional development is relates to the understanding of the theory of interaction as this theory will help one and understand dynamism such as the need to bring people together so that they can share their problems amicably and thus enhance flow of information and resources. However, the general understanding of this theory will be well placed if community workers appreciate the aspect of ‘who’ to involve in the process of service delivery. For instance, we feel that there is need to incorporate community based leaders and residents and none governmental organisations however, these choices should be done carefully so that they become inclusive. Secondly, there have been concerns in the community regarding representations. It is therefore realized, within the scope of lecture six that findings by Kenny (2006) are essential in selecting ‘who’ to participate. In so doing, homogeneity of the group should not be taken lightly. Building capable communities is another area that has been continuous based on different scholars that have attempted to relate the issue with community work (Kimmel and Aronson, 2009). The issue (building capable communities) is intertwined between the process of participating in community servicing and empowerment framework earlier discussed. The process of ensuring that there is capable community means that we will need to engage with different participants; bigger or smaller groups. However, it is not clear how the homogeneity of the participants can be framed within the theory of interaction so that it becomes easy to encourage sharing of information as well as making the community to inculcate a culture where they can challenge different ideologies aimed at promoting their wellbeing. As it stands, I understand the issue of ‘building capable communities’ as a multifaceted area of studying community to an extent that one will need to integrate the different operational domains, specifically problem assessment to find better approach of building community deemed capable. A related issue to building capable community is the assessment of designs government has put in place so as to work community. Without the assistance of government, Mawson (2008) notes that community work may be futile. Government is needed to do the networking or in some cases, facilitate the needed services with community workers/servicers. Nevertheless, there is a concern that as far as government approaches to working with community is concerned; there is still lack of cooperation between government and non-government organization when it comes to service delivery. When this is improved Eversole (2015) notes that there can be services brought closer to the community making other workers to be even more responsive in discharging their duties. Module Three: Working with Community One way of approaching work with community is by embracing community decision making processes. Works that directly impact the society need critical decision making processes and as a result should be inclusive where different agendas and priorities followed by participation from organisations, consultants, the community and practitioners in decision making (Edgar, 2001). Nonetheless, decision making has always been compounded by some challenges such as skepticism or failure by some parties to contribute in the process of decision making. Secondly, the option of avoiding top-down talk is still not clear. While studies such as Jureidini and Poole (2003) have advocated on issues such as shared understanding of words as a determiner of avoiding top-down talk, working in the community may need more than this. That is, it should stretches to community partnership whereby there is mutual collaboration aimed at attaining mutually agreed upon goals. Expounding on partnership, tenets of lecture nine is coherent on the relationship between community work and partnership and one of the important points is that partnership is needed to help in streamlining projects that may be complex. While the resource have already recognized the need to change our priorities so as to achieve the intended goals related to partnership, there is need to ascertain specific advantages and disadvantages so that a clear decision can be made. Beyond these issues, as a community worker, it will be essential that the process of partnership recognizes participations from all players so that inclusivity can be attained. The point of inclusivity or appreciating players from all quotas has been suggested because of its link with ‘community planning and knowledge.’ According to Kimmel and Aronson (2009) planning for a community is only successful if it can be relevant to specific needs of the people or if it eventuates problems that people face in their day to day activities. But this point can only be possible by first understanding the profile of a company before progressing to issues such as talking with people in the community. Secondly, there is need for description and measure of activities in the community so that its significance to the functioning of community work can be measured. Conclusion The aspects of understanding community, approaches to community and working with community remain multifaceted concepts that cannot just be understood from literatures reviewed in the journal. Instead, it touches on the need for community participation and capacity building so that there can be maximum utilization of resources or to a larger extent, community can benefit from the works rendered to them. As a result, there are three most important facets or things that have influenced my understanding of the lessons. First, community work is about respecting homogeneity. When this aspect is recognized then it will be easy to design models that necessitate capacity building. Secondly, government approaches to working with communities is yet to be streamlined with specific needs and homogeneity, particularly with regard to the Australian Aboriginals. Thirdly, ‘community of interest’ is very critical and important points that need deeper understanding. To affects the scope of economic, social and political shaping of a community which in term influences the direction ‘working in the community’ will take. References Clarke, S. (2000). Social work as community development: A management model for social change (2nd ed.). Aldershot, Hampshire, England ; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. Edgar, D. (2001). The patchwork nation. Rethinking government - re-building community. Sydney: Harper Collins Publishers. Eversole, R (2015) Knowledge Partnering For Community Development. London: Routledge. Jureidini, R. & Poole, M. (Eds.) (2003). Sociology: Australian connections. (3rd edition). Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Kenny, S. (2006). Developing communities for the future. South Melbourne, Vic.: Thomson. Kimmel, M. & Aronson, A. (2009). Sociology now. The essentials. Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon. Mawson, A. (2008). The social entrepreneur: Making communities work. London: Atlantic. Taylor, J., Wilkinson, D., Cheers, B. (2008). Working with communities in Health and Human Services. Sydney: Oxford University Press. Read More