Social Work as Community Development

A Management Model for Social Change

Stephen Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138728141
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351749718
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2000:  The second edition of Social Work as Community Development is thoroughly revised and updated taking into account lessons from community development and international experiences applicable in developed economies. The application of system theory to the problems of managing change is the core theme. The book will be essential reading for the UK DipSW/MScEcon in Applied Social Studies and MScEcon in Community Care Studies as well as for students of community development and social work in the USA, Asia and Australia. It will also be useful for practitioners and policy-makers across social work, social welfare and social policy.

1 Social Work and the Development Process

The professional social work task can be seen as seeking to assist a client through the use of direct and indirect intervention strategies. These intervention strategies aim to support, enable and empower the client until at least a state of equilibrium is reached, enabling the client to take stock. Where possible, the first outcome is the establishment of trust and the creation of a helping partnership. From this position, the client can then embark on a fresh approach to personal pressures and difficulties. In some cases, the professional will be able to continue working with the client, developing a different relationship, while the client personally seeks solutions and outcomes to the issues of survival. This further process may be called development. During the first process, and through a programme of development, the professional will use elements of power to aim, steer or control the personal or social changes which occur.

For most professional workers, there are distinct limitations to this scenario. The state, through its legislation, and the shape and direction of Local Authority policies, create power and authority contexts through which the professional must implement a limited range of strategies. These policies and laws become the reference point for the professional. The extent and direction of the application of professional power will be shaped by these constraints.

There are good reasons for this. Firstly, the professional must seek clarity in setting objectives. These will be influenced by the framework of professional knowledge and values which the worker holds, but they will also be constrained by the daily work culture of the agency.

Secondly, there are few employing agencies today who will pay for a product unless they know what they are going to get. They will not be favourably disposed towards objectives which are open-ended, the outcomes of which are ill-defined and which may result in them, or their professional agent, losing financial control over the enterprise. The exercise of direct control over working practices has been one outcome of the 'contract culture' and seems likely to intensify (Depts. of Health, et.al., 1989, p. 42; Audit Commission, 1992b, p. 20).

Thirdly, the professional will also seek personal and career stability which will depend, to some considerable extent, on the maintenance of conformity with the ideology and operational framework of the employing agency. This also includes the expectation that the worker will be loyal to the employing institution itself.

Fourthly, there will also be limits set by each professional's personal perception, skill and motivation to provide certain attainable outcomes to any particular intervention strategy.

Somewhere, in all this, is the client's perspective. This perspective embraces all the personal responses to the predicament at hand. It has a rather less developed concern for the fine-tuning of the politics, administrative processes and power dynamics of the professional world. The client has the 'problem' but professionals lay the claim that their intervention will produce solutions which will be satisfactory to the client. If the above criteria apply, the professional brings conditions to the shape of the 'solution' and sets limitations on the framework through which a solution will be approached. In cases were there is a statutory basis for the intervention of the professional, the statutory framework is itself imbued with the power of being the most 'correct' of all approaches to the issue.

Thus, to what ever extent the social worker may seek to avoid it, the power relationship between the social worker and the client is an unequal one. The social worker's starting point is the authority or the policy through which the intervention strategy is launched and constrained. Objectively, therefore, the social worker is in a privileged and powerful position to enforce, direct and control the whole relationship with a client. The outcome is an agenda which is firmly set before the client's perspective is considered for most questions, save those of detail.

For the community development worker, this form of relationship is problematic. If community development is a part of social work, and if community development workers are employed by agencies which are subject to the pressures of constraint and control which we have described above, then community development workers will find their hands tied in exactly the same way as the general mass of social workers.

The descriptive terminology of the policy documents and theoretical textbooks of community development is set firmly against coerciveness or manipulation. The process of community development is conceived as creating the conditions for social change and supporting the client community through it. The process is supportive until the community can sustain the activity on its own. The self-determination of the agenda and its priorities are clearly identified as the prerogative of the client group.

The principles of community development are uncompromising. The community identifies the need to change. The organisation for that purpose and its rooting and sustainability in community culture can only be achieved through the full, voluntary and co-operative efforts of the players. The strengthening of the client population in this process is to be the focus for the intervention of the professional.

Trust between the professional and the client community must be achieved if the supportive, development process is to make progress. As the relationship becomes more inter-dependent and the process more complex, trust will become the bedrock of this central and essential relationship. This trust is established on the basis that the paid worker is not an agent for a prescriptive outcome or a disguised form of colonialism. The dilemma for the professional is whether or not issues such as the 'greatest good for the greatest number', the influence of local, political policies or even the ability to pay the mortgage can be reconciled with the principles of community self-determination, self-help and sustainable development.

Without all the information about the professional's agenda, the client group is not in a position to understand and make a free choice about the direction in which it should go. Without ensuring that the community has this freedom to choose, the professional maintains a paternalistic and elitist position. There is no way in which the client community can challenge the agenda of the professional without threatening the future of its professional support. This is a double bind situation. To challenge it at all threatens the basis of the trust that is the basis of their working partnership. From the client's perspective, the professional has the greatest freedom to act, being in possession of institutional power, personal skills and insight into the affairs of the community.

Even without a hidden agenda for the professional, the forces at work in the arena of change are still far from ideal. If a targeted community has these pressures explained, and it goes about setting its own agenda for development, only certain conditions will allow the community and the professional to work freely together. Only when there is no clash between the client group's change objectives and the policy objectives of the worker's employer, will the professional be truly free to act on the preferred and expressed wishes of the community. To describe it differently would be to misrepresent the situation. It is for these reasons, amongst others, that there have been many criticisms of community development as a vehicle for social change (Corrigan, 1975; Mayo, 1975; Cockburn, 1977). Structural impediments, such as the unequal power relationships in society at large, can only place more barriers in the path of the professional wishing to enable or empower groups or segments of communities. If the direction of possible, or permitted change, is merely that required by the power structure, then how can the role of the worker be justified? For example: A worker is assisting in the creation of a tenants' association on a Council-owned estate. Friction arises over the standards of maintenance. For the worker to be seen to be instrumental in the organisation of a rent strike may alarm elected representatives, cause tension between senior Council officials, and result in direct pressure being applied for the 'initiative' to be terminated.

There are only so many professionally trained people employed to work in the community at the interface between official policies and citizen action. Statutory agencies employing community-based service workers, such as social workers, care managers, primary health care or community nurses, housing officials and youth and community education workers represent a range of these. Others, such as town planners and public health officers have an investment in the opinions, and the levels of active interest of the public in their programmes. The delivery of public services in the community has been the focus of more and more policies over the past decade. There has been increasing control over the amount of public finances available for them, and also regulation over the form in which they are delivered.

The assumption of professional autonomy, or semi-autonomy, is something which may be the subject of increased restriction under the emergent policies of community care. It may be that the distinction between a professional, on the one hand, and a functionary in the chain of delivery of social services, on the other, will be tested at this margin. The ability to act towards goals and outcomes based upon insight, the possession of an organised body of theory and opinion, and the ability to work according to a verifiable practice framework has been the hallmark of the professional (Goode, 1969; Toren, 1969). Decisions have already been taken to devalue the currency of British social work within the European Community through restricting the training period for qualification. This was codified through the Central Council for the Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) during a restructuring of training programmes (CCETSW, 1989). The authority and freedom to intervene professionally, on behalf of, or with, those in need, may be already under severe threat.

On the one hand, hopes for the unlimited expansion of services in response to need have been frustrated. On the other, much of the operational flexibility allowed to professionals has been restricted through process monitoring and contractual limits. Maintenance workers in public gardens no longer provide the same social reference point for pensioners or children, as did an earlier generation of 'Park Keepers'. As a larger part of the public service sector is contracted out to the 'independent sector', many local and national voluntary agencies may find that they have less flexibility and scope for seeking or developing activities outside their contracted remit. Specific tasks are contracted for on an hourly basis, making flexibility an unpaid-for luxury.

The contractual agreements of the 'mixed economy of care' (Wistow, et.ai., 1994) are gradually ensnaring those elements of the statutory agencies, and the larger voluntary organisations which are designated as service providers. These contractual service activities will come to absorb the greater part of their total resources. This will bring about, de facto, the 'third force' role of service providers which are tied to a service function, and barred from a wider role of social comment.

This is the suggestion that so enraged many readers of the Centris Report (Knight, 1993). Instead of limiting this to Voluntary Sector suppliers, as Centris recommended, large parts of the local authority network will be cut adrift on the same raft, on a sea of contradictions. They will lack the capability to assert any direct influence on their financial controllers or over the scale of the service which they provide. Yet they will find themselves having to face the frustrations of those in need on a daily basis (see Figure 1 below).

Ultimately, it is government which restricts the resources available to the 'purchasing authority', which, in turn, fix the contract levels. The 'service user', on the other hand, only gets to vote for central government every four to five years, and local welfare lobbies cut little ice at election time.

It is claimed that community care should not be a cheap alternative for institutional care (Davis, 1991), then the 'reform' of public finances points to an increase in the incidence of unmet needs (Audit Commission, 1992b, p.37). The professional desire will be to attempt to meet all needs which are considered necessary after a professional assessment of the case. But the financial restrictions imposed through the funding process may rule out anything save for a pre-defined service which has been specifically contracted. If success in winning a contract to provide care also ties the agency's hands when it comes to highlighting the incidence of unmet needs, a powerful mechanism for seeking social reform will have been lost.

This process may also curtail the freedom to initiate activities in the workplace which are not led by the policies and priorities of the funding body. Innovations in technique, the flexibility to respond to the demands of service users for more control, or the ability to vary inputs to conform to cultural imperatives may all be ruled out. This will create a sterile environment for those who claim a vocational motive for their work.

Figure 1: Accountability - the broken link and the residual needs gap

In future, the criteria for sustaining a public service will depend more and more on the funding authority's definition of priority. This will be linked to its ability to pay from fixed resources. Funders may even find that they have too few resources to provide services for those needs which they, themselves, define as having the highest priority. The amount may fluctuate from year to year, leaving people without services who once received them. A 'residual needs gap' will be established, which will bring frustration and instability to many in the most vulnerable circumstances (see Figure 1, above).

There has even been talk of curtailing, by statutory means, the scope of 'independent' agencies which hold contracts with the public authorities (Knight, 1993). There is now a potential for a serious gap to emerge between social and health needs and the ability of the professional services to provide for them. As this process unfolds, there is also a gap emerging in the lines of accountability. The purchasers and suppliers of services are supposed to liaise with the service users over the nature and purpose of services which go to make up the 'mixed economy of care', and the contract culture. However, the scale of the operation is fixed by the government, which controls the levels of local taxation through 'rate capping'. The assessment of need must soon become firmly tied to the levels of available resources, which leaves those with unmet need out in the cold. They can only rail on at the local authority, which they will blame for their predicament (see Figure 1 above).

There are two reasons why community development can be justified within this unequal context. Firstly, there is a need for support for those elements of society that are being excluded from the real discussion regarding resources - the service user. This group is the most vulnerable in the community, and is now dependent on the caprices of accountants for much-needed social support. In the past, social workers have not proved to be strong advocates for their clients in the face of their own employers' policies. In fulfilling their new functions as care managers, they will be tied in more tightly to the structures of control. A mechanism is needed to get past these difficulties, and to generate more power for the client. Community development is a professional task which centres on the citizen as the target for intervention, rather than the citizen-as-service-user. The primary concern of community development is the empowerment of the role of citizen, per se, and not in any other capacity. This role is capable of definition and communication to interested parties (see below). It is against this definition that the professional should and can be held accountable. If the client community is made aware of the conflicts of interest that surround community care, they can then assess their own position as citizens more clearly. The role of the professional in this capacity can be thoroughly appraised. If the worker is employed by the 'service purchaser', and is being held accountable by the client community, the transparency of this relationship might constrain an employer from the worst excesses of manipulation or exploitation.

The second aspect concerns the whole question of damage limitation. When the professional is in possession of a clear and uncluttered perspective of the nature and purpose of planned social change, then the costs which have to be borne by the community through the possible loss of control can be minimised. A professional, skilled in the process of focusing community attention on change and in mobilising it for that purpose, must be preferred to another authority figure who is equipped with just technical knowledge about the physical outcome of the policy. Without a focus, and being susceptible to grasping at any straw, people under pressure may react to events in ways which may leave them more vulnerable than before. Development in the community affords people the opportunity to focus rationally on their predicament. An aware citizen is a better citizen and is more likely to conserve resources and target their own activities in more constructive ways than if they are left to the vagaries of chance.

Our task in this volume is to provide a model from which the professional can establish an analytical perspective. The basic theoretical issue here is whether or not there is a consistency in the way community development principles and skills are applied through a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface to the Second Edition & Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Social Work and the Development Process
• 2 Seeking Clarity through a Management Model
• 3 Development as Community Development - I
• 4 Development as Community Development - II
• 5 Social Planning and Development -I: Simple Organisations
• 6 Social Planning and Development - II: Complex Organisations
• 7 Social Action for Change -I: The Outsiders
• 8 Social Action for Change - II: The Insiders
• 9 Evaluation
• Bibliography
• Index