Community Practice

Description

For almost two decades, Community Practice has been a definitive text for social workers, community practitioners, and students eager to help individuals contribute to and use community resources or work to change oppressive community structures. In this third edition, a wealth of new charts and cases spotlight the linkages between theoretical orientations and practical skills, with an enhanced emphasis on the inherently political nature of social work and community practice. Boxes, examples, and exercises illustrate the range of skills and strategies available to savvy community practitioners in the 21st century, including networking, marketing and staging, political advocacy, and leveraging information and communication technologies. Other features include:

- New material on community practice ethics, critical practice skills, community assessment and assets inventory and mapping, social problem analysis, and applying community ractice skills to casework practice
- Consideration of post-9/11 community challenges
- Discussion on the changing ethnic composition of America and what this means for practitioners
- An exploration of a vastly changed political landscape following the election of President Obama, the Great Recession, the rise of the Tea Party, and the increasing political and corporate use of pseudo-grassroots endeavors
- A completely revamped instructor's manual available online at www.oup.com/us/communitypractice
This fully revised classic text provides a comprehensive and integrated overview of the community theory and skills fundamental to all areas of social work practice. Broad in scope and intensive in analysis, it is suitable for undergraduate as well as graduate study. Community Practice offers students and practitioners the tools necessary to promote the welfare of individuals and communities by tapping into the ecological foundations of community and social work practice.

New to this Edition

• New material on community practice ethics, critical practice skills, community assessment and assets inventory and mapping, social problem analysis, and applying community practice skills to casework practice
• Explores the vastly changed political landscape following the election of President Obama, the Great Recession, the rise of the Tea Party, and the increasing political and corporate use of pseudo-grassroots endeavors

Table of Contents

1. Community Practice: An Introduction

PART I. Understanding the Social Environment and Social Interaction
2. Theory-Based, Model-Based Community Practice
3. The Nature of Social and Community Problems
4. The Concept of Community in Social Work Practice

PART II. Community Practice Skills for Social Workers: Using the Social Environment
5. Assessment: Discovering and Documenting the Life of a Community
6. Assertiveness: Using Assessment in Community Practice
7. Using Self in Community Practice: Assertiveness
8. Using Your Agency
9. Using Work Groups: Committees, Teams, and Boards
10. Using Networks and Networking
11. Using Marketing
12. Using the Advocacy Spectrum
13. Using Organizing: Acting in Concert
14. Community Social Casework