Community Social Work: Assessment and Intervention

Let's consider an example to illustrate this concept:

• Risks associated with medical care and health.

Obviously, we have a set of indicators to describe the state of health of a population in general, and we use these to set priorities. For example, the infant mortality rate, the available vaccines, health workers, and their distribution in the area. The first step for the community social worker, and the institution or organization where they work or that finances their activities, is to describe such situations from three points of view:

1. We must build on what we may call the principle of heterogeneity of the population and its impact on health: The very unequal living conditions also produce very different epidemiological patterns among the different groups.
2. Prioritize the needs of the population and establish a model that begins to address the most serious situations, optimizing resources. As we are always working with scarce resources, attention should be directed preferentially to those groups that face greater risks.
3. The impact of the work must be measured to reorient and improve both the diagnosis and the methods of daily work.

Knowing Our Community Better: Towards Participatory Assessment

The community social worker, based on a general description of the risks that affect people from the standpoint of community action, has to deepen their knowledge of the particular environment in which they develop their activity. The diagnosis must become a self-diagnosis to the extent that, in each step, information is passed on to members of the community, thus increasing awareness about the situation and the desired effect.

1. A first step is to analyze the physical environment and describe its main features.
2. A second step is to identify the main social actors of the environment (union or political leaders, associations, the most representative personalities with more relevance) and the model of social relations that characterizes this population (higher or lower level of stratification, more or less level of ethnic heterogeneity, linguistic and cultural, gender relations, etc.).
3. A third step is to analyze the relational density level and the level of community development to objectify the aspects that must be developed more intensely in the professional activity of the community social worker.
4. Finally, it is important to establish an initial meeting with what we call the community assembly, open to all who are interested, to outline the objectives, methodology, and timing of the intervention to be performed in the environment.

• Environmental characteristics: Despite the variety of situations where it is appropriate to apply the methodology of community social work, we can establish a first description of the environment based on the following factors: geographical location, natural resources, population, economy, housing, education, and health. Around these elements, we can objectify the major problems that both the worker and the community perceive as relevant.
• The feasibility of community social work depends largely on a correct description of the main social actors that are relevant in the area in which to intervene. Therefore, a reasonable strategy is not to create ad hoc organizations. Rather, it is best to recur to existing organizations, the social leaders who have been previously consolidated, and thereafter generate a process of change and involvement of all the community. In the process of collective awareness of self, people can reflect and expose their reactive behavior and intentions with regard to plans for improving conditions of life, thereby generating a change in organizations and in the distribution of power.
• Any intervention based on the methodology of community social work aims to increase the core density and relational skills in a given environment. We can distinguish five dimensions: the level of participation, type of organization, management capacity, negotiation capacity, and experience in mobilization.

Project Development and Addressing Challenges

From the results, the community social worker has to coordinate three variables: