Advancing Community Social Work in Urban Settings

Key Strategies for Community Health & Development

1. Organize an Interdisciplinary Expert Team: Form an interdisciplinary team of experts covering various intervention areas.
2. Engage the Community with a Social Work Team: Establish a community social work team comprising health-relevant individuals from within the community. Utilize existing organizations where possible, avoiding the creation of new ones unless strictly necessary. It is crucial to involve representatives from all existing organizations or individuals with significant influence, ensuring their collective commitment to improving living conditions mobilizes the entire community.
3. Prioritize Women's Linkage with the Community Team: Pay particular attention to connecting women with the community team, as they often experience poorer health outcomes and face severe risks related to pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum periods.
4. Develop Training Programs: Create training programs for the general population and, specifically, for at-risk groups. These programs aim to increase their knowledge base, enabling them to implement improved health standards across all aspects of life.
5. Establish Regular Evaluation Systems: Implement regular evaluation systems to analyze results and set short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. These goals should be directly linked to the resources required, including financial and educational resources, and the roles to be played by public and private institutions in the area. In this way, it becomes easier to promote community action, improving not only the internal life of the community but also its external engagement with institutions to secure necessary resources (in some cases, such as treating waste and sewage, very substantial resources are required).

Urban Community Social Work Context

We find ourselves in a civilization of cities. In the next 25 years, according to UN estimates, 80% of the world's population will live in cities.

Objectives for Urban Community Social Work

Addressing urban degradation processes and exclusionary trends operating in our cities is a complex challenge for social workers. Two basic questions should be noted:

• a) The urban dynamics highlight the need for collective action, as challenges (ranging from providing municipal sports facilities to building a health center) cannot be addressed individually.
• b) The city itself as an actor can become aware of the need to regenerate its urban fabric and establish dynamic social inclusion for its inhabitants. Otherwise, negative consequences such as insecurity, violence, and urban degradation could jeopardize the city's ability to attract investment in a globalized economy.