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University and community partnerships are embedded in institutional contexts that create conflicting demands and require collaborative approaches that balance competing needs and interests and focus on accomplishing shared goals for community change. This chapter offers a case study of a partnership between a Nashville-based human service organization and a university-based research team that developed for the purpose of conducting a community needs assessment to fulfil the requirements for a Promise Neighborhoods Planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education. It explores how conflicting demands can potentially limit the authenticity of partnership relationships, and in turn, undermine the success of these types of collaboration. The chapter examines resulting challenges that arise in relation to three key tensions: defining expertise, institutional barriers, and expectations of scientific rigor. Approaches to overcoming these challenges are offered, and lessons learned are explored.

The HOD field school is an experiential learning program designed to promote the development of university students and community partners as they work together toward integrating research and action around social justice issues through community-based participatory methods. In this chapter, we describe the theoretical foundations and history of the HOD field school and the experiences of community partners and student participants, comparing experiences across settings and expanding on themes that have been observed consistently. Throughout our discussion we address the complexities of simultaneously meeting the personal and professional needs of students while working with communities in ways that align with the ideals of empowerment, reciprocity, intercultural respect, learning, participatory research, and sustainability. Finally, based on experience and theory we offer suggestions for educators who are interested in developing similar programs.

In this chapter, we assert that research, scholarship, and teaching in the fields of prevention and youth development can be greatly enhanced by extending the traditional scientific paradigm by integrating ecological systems theory and collaboratively engaging community members and organizations. We frame this chapter by drawing on our department's mission and three recent research projects conducted by faculty and students in the department. We then discuss how the department’s mission and our action-oriented, ecological systems theoretical orientation permeates multiple aspects of the research process, including the conceptualization of projects, articulation of research questions, intervention design, research methods, project oversight and management, and use of findings. Using concrete examples from the projects, we highlight how research and action can be balanced and pursued simultaneously in community settings to generate knowledge and effect social change. As a result, community-engaged research, informed by ecological systems theory, will enable more relevant action and thus promote meaningful youth, organizational, and community development.

This chapter deals with two main topics both of which were key recommendations of the Independent Commission – the establishment of district policing partnerships (DPPs) and the introduction of policing with the community. It sets out the legislation and the appointment of the first DPPs by the Policing Board (in Northern Ireland’s largest ever public appointment exercise), their roll-out, their work and the support provided to them by the Policing Board, challenges to their members in terms of personal security, and their successive reconstitutions. The second half of the chapter deals with policing with the community which the Commission defined as the police participating in the community and the community participating in its own policing and supporting the police. The chapter again brings out the role of the Board in promoting policing with the community in a variety of ways. It looks at the relationship between DPPs and Community Safety Partnerships and makes comparisons with Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships in England and Wales.

How do multicultural communities define success for their youth in cultural terms? Evidence from a long–term research partnership with a pre–college program is used to consider the fifth core question of the book. For the children of Mexican immigrants in this study, success meant attaining their own and their families’ dreams of going to college and college–based work. For the program, success meant sustaining program activities, improving effectiveness, and advancing knowledge. In addition to quantitative evidence about participating students’ demographic background, career identities, math pathways, challenges and resources across worlds, longitudinal case studies illuminated the value of capital, alienation, and challenge models in understanding the multiple pathways of immigrant youth. Finally, the chapter considers under what conditions communities see themselves as culturally homogeneous and thus consider diversity as a deficit or threat to overcome, and when communities see themselves as multicultural and seek ways to build more than one successful pathway for their youth.

This chapter tries to resolve the following questions: Why should this conceptual shift to ‘community’, ‘prevention’, and ‘partnerships’ have taken place? And why at this particular historic juncture? It begins by reviewing and critically assessing some of the contemporary explanations advanced for the emergence of ‘community partnerships’ in the late twentieth century. This will involve the examination of policy and academic justifications for the current trends in criminal-justice discourse. Then, it explores the advancement of an alternative analysis, focusing on the issues of legitimacy and responsibility. It also argues that appeals to ‘community’ and ‘partnerships’ make up an important element in the recalibration of what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, groups, and the state. Moreover, it sketches out and accents a number of broad political trends and shifts which are simultaneously unfolding across a variety of areas of social life.

Community residents, and the community-based nonprofit and grassroots organizations who serve them, are important actors in urban public health. This chapter discusses challenges in effectively engaging community actors in urban health research and practice, as well as strategies for effective partnerships to overcome these challenges. Key challenges include addressing the history of mistrust between urban populations and research, making research relevant to community needs, and engaging communities in all phases of research. Community engagement and partnerships are fundamental to cross-sector collaborations in urban public health research and interventions.

This chapter summarises findings from research into the work of community safety managers in Wales, entailing responses to anti-social behaviour (ASB) in each of the 22 community safety partnerships in the country. The data are used to question prevailing assumptions about the problematisation of this signal issue in popular concerns about crime and disorder. The chapter challenges two diametrically opposed but equally ‘smooth’ narratives: that governing ASB is either a morally righteous, enlightened and commonsensical campaign against a feral minority, or else that it represents a moral panic manufactured to support an increasingly punitive and intolerant state. The chapter considers the complex and hybrid narratives of disorder which underpin the problem-solving work undertaken by community safety practitioners. The resilient Fabianism of community safety managers' accounts of their own work disturbs narratives of social control in critical social science, which are in danger of believing the hype of the very political projects they seek to challenge.

This chapter explores the challenges of fostering learning across traditional academic and non-academic boundaries when conducting participatory research in community-university partnerships. The authors were all active collaborators in the Imagine – Social programme. They focus on the role of research retreats in including a diversity of partners in this long-term research project. After introducing the key terms of ‘community of practice’ and ‘retreats’, the chapter describes the types of boundaries that were addressed and the challenges that were faced in crossing them. Next the authors present their approach to crossing these boundaries by cultivating a community of practice through these retreats. The stages of development of a community of practice (Wenger et al, 2002) are then set out and are reframed to focus on boundary issues drawing on the successive retreats as illustrations. Finally, the chapter closes by identifying the key enablers that supported the development of such a boundary-crossing community.

This chapter evaluates the outward-looking, multilevel neighbourhood-regeneration approach in Great Britain. It describes the Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) in England and the Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) in Scotland, and proposes a hypothesis as to why the area-based initiatives (ABI) model has been unable to fundamentally challenge neighbourhood trajectories. The chapter explains that while the multilevel approach seems to signal a shift away from a simple focus on the internal problems of deprived neighbourhoods, it remains surprisingly disengaged from wider structural issues, such as the management of the regional economy.

Speaking broadly, translational research refers to the application of research findings, from basic science to practice-based and community research, to improve public health. Several authors have proposed more specific definitions to distinguish between the various phases of translation. This chapter provides an overview of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, including CTSA community engagement programs; frameworks and models for community engagement; Community Advisory Boards and their role in CTSA community engagement; academic–community partnership evaluation; CTSA pilot study grant programs; and CTSA training programs in community-based participatory research (CBPR). In addition to increased efficiency and impact of biomedical research, the promise of the CTSA program is paradigm-shifting community-engaged, translational research aimed at improving health and alleviating suffering in diverse communities.

There is a close focus on the role of the Home Office and the Inspectorate of Constabulary in determining national outcomes for police and crime commissioners. How the commissioners perceive these wider relationships is explored in the first part of the chapter. The context for local accountability of the police and the role of influencing partners and colleagues is also considered, illuminated by the confidential comments of the commissioners and their police teams. The possible demise of Community Safety Partnerships is examined, together with the expanding police and crime commissioner role in local criminal justice outcomes.

Community-university partnerships can lead to the co-production of really useful knowledge, enabling communities to research their own issues and concerns. As a result, communities and social movements can develop more effective strategies, in response. Such partnerships have significant potential, but only if they are based upon mutual understanding and trust. There are pressures on universities in the current policy context, impacting on the scope for developing collaborative rather than more competitive ways of working, respecting communities’ priorities and time constraints. Despite these pressures though, the chapter provides examples of mutually beneficial partnerships, including partnerships developing participatory research via community arts and cultural initiatives.

Abstract: This chapter describes how the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC) developed its theory of change as a partner in the Skillman Foundation-funded Detroit Good Neighborhoods initiative. The definition of a theory of change accepted was of “a specification of what must be done to achieve the desired goals, what other important impacts may also be anticipated, and how these goals and impacts would be generated.” The chapter discusses the processes in the creation of iterations of Foundation and UMSSW/TAC theories of change. The chapter concludes with the benefits, limitations, issues, and challenges of aligning logic models with the varied expectations and goals of residents, funding foundations, and university partners.

Abstract: This chapter describes the model of community development used by the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC). The chapter presents a definition and description of community development as a distinct model of community practice. The chapter discusses the goals of community development, core values and principles of community development. The chapter summarizes the role of place based initiatives in community development. The limits and challenges of discerning the evidence base of the effectiveness of community development are reviewed, and an emerging perspective of possibilities of evidence based community development is outlined. The chapter ends with thoughtful considerations about the tactical use of community development within municipal communities during Detroit’s more recent times of turbulent economic, financial and political change.

Chapter 5 notes that, by 1999, the Independence School District had become a model for other school districts for implementing “whole school” reform and family service initiatives thanks to forward-thinking commitments by its leadership and board of education. Administrators and educators had successfully dealt with communications challenges, addressed District finance issues, made infrastructure improvements, implemented programs to advance students' academic achievement and established new community partnerships since introducing School of the 21st Century concepts in 1988. As year 2000 approaches, however, a new superintendent, Dr. David Rock, realizes the District needs to implement more change for the better “to see ours become one of the top school districts in the nation.” A new tax levy that he proposes passes; the District uses its funds to increase teacher salaries. Dr. Rock begins recruiting new administrators to advance School of the 21st Century-related programming, including Dr. Jim Hinson and Jennifer Walker.

Drawing on experiences with the JustPublics@365 participatory open online course, or POOC, this chapter discusses the politics and possibilities of open access pedagogy and the broader engagement with communities that academics might achieve. We situated the POOC in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood and used the course to form an academic-community partnership. Rather than replicate the broadcast model employed by many MOOCs, in which an instructor delivers education to a broad audience of otherwise disconnected students, the POOC sought to engage participants through open site-based and online experiences, including lectures and class readings posted openly for any member of the public to reach.