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This introductory chapter sets the context from which to understand the importance of urban-centered practice for social work in the 21st century. It traces how the author became interested in a community-assets perspective and why the development of urban-specific interventions are so critical to community social work practice. In addition, it outlines the goals for the book, defines some of the key terms that are used, and describes the research methods used in selecting and analyzing case studies.

Hazleton, Pennsylvania, was typical of many working‐class communities in America recently impacted by a rapid increase in the Latino population. Itself made up of the descendants of previous immigrants from Europe a century ago, the community might have been expected to understand and tolerate the newcomers. But in fact, the change was marked by a wave of xenophobia, with rumors blaming crime and cultural decay on the new residents, and the reaction climaxed with the passage of a new city law imposing harsh penalties on undocumented aliens. Later, one such immigrant was confronted and beaten to death on the street of a nearby town. The area's angry reaction can be understood in the context of local politics, influenced by nationally circulated claims that “illegal immigrants” were tied to criminal gang activity, drug dealing, and cynical appropriation of free government services.

This chapter presents a case study for practitioners in intensive community-based family work. The story of the Vega family helps describe the roots, program development, and strategic clinical techniques of a service designed to maintain children who have experienced or are at risk of hospitalization or residential care. The aim is twofold. First, as program developers, the authors describe the roots of their model and how it can be constructed, supported, and implemented clinically. Second, as clinicians they seek to move beyond basic principles to describe some of the approaches they have refined over years of working with severely challenged families. These include ecological assessment, the art of intensive case management and metasystemic family work, contingency planning for urgent intervention, and assisting families in making transitions in care. With the Vegas' help, the chapter also illustrates how this work can be carried out through grassroots work by a relatively small community-based agency.

This chapter focuses upon the delivery of personal social services: approaches to practice designed to meet the particular needs of individuals, families, and small groups. A new reader coming to the subject of rural social work might be forgiven for wondering if there was an intrinsic conflict between personal social services and community social work. This is hardly surprising given the widespread use of the term ‘community’ to signify approaches to practice that are responsive to local context. Notions of partnership and localisation of service are hallmarks of so-called community-oriented practice. The chapter examines three dimensions of service delivery: service location and point of delivery, mode of delivery, and organisational independence and degree of specialisation. It also distinguishes four dimensions or forms of practice – generalist/specialist, visiting, embedded, and mandated or statutory practice – and reviews their implications for the provision of rural services.

This chapter outlines the nature of community practice. It sets the scene for the rest of the book, which focuses on issues related to the management of community practice. It briefly discusses the growth of work with a community focus, the reasons why it was felt necessary to coin a new term ‘community practice’ and how this differs from the more familiar terms: ‘community work’ and ‘community development’. The chapter then briefly explores the contested nature of the term ‘community’, in preparation for the elaboration of a definition of community practice and an outline of the knowledge, values and skills required for community practitioners.

This chapter examines the nature of ‘community work’ and regards ‘community development’ as one of several approaches to community work. It considers Marjorie Mayo's conclusion that community development as an intervention has limited radical potential, and argues that this conclusion is equally valid thirty-five years later, as the more radical ‘community action’ approaches to community work have been marginalised and community development has become mainstreamed within policies and practices concerned with promoting citizen participation and neighbourhood renewal. The chapter also offers examples of locally based action for political change (based on community organising and critical pedagogy), which keep alive the radical community-work tradition. The focus is on community work as an occupation and set of practices in Britain, where it has developed separately from social work.

This chapter comments on those qualities that can make a difference to how the community psychologist behaves in carrying out community work. It is hoped that by making these qualities explicit, the power of the ecological analogy is affirmed more clearly. For the chapter, adopting the ecological perspective means shifting the focus in our communities away from our personal aspirations, our sponsoring institutions, and even the visible persons or institutions in town, and, instead, making the local conditions and the local events the forum for its work. To carry out such an expedition means doing new and different things; it means grasping the intricacies of the total community so as to identify talents and resources that are hidden yet present. It means locating the persons who care about their town.

This chapter looks at similarities among community-oriented practice, community social work, community work, and community intervention. It examines the ways in which rural social work can contribute to action at the community level aimed at assisting, sustaining, developing, and, sometimes, helping to rebuild communities. Although different writers use different terminology for describing their ideas on community social work, and have developed varied models to describe the processes of planning and development, there is considerable overlap between much of their work. The chapter distinguishes three broad strategies for community intervention: social planning and community planning, community-services development, and community development, which also includes community organisation. Finally, it discusses personal skills, capacities, and characteristics necessary for effective casework.

Within the campaigning community work during the 1970s, the purpose of the community development role was to support local communities to challenge and make demands of the local state. Pressure was viewed as the way to achieving change. This chapter looks at the way practitioners worked by drawing on the examples provided by the interviewees. It compares and contrasts these earlier confrontational approaches with the shift towards practice within a community planning framework. It also looks at the community development inspired by conflict approaches including the recent shift towards a community planning model based on dialogue and partnership working.

Digital nomads have come to Bali to work. Chapter 4 unpacks nomads’ sources of earned income through entrepreneurship, freelancing, and full-time employment. It also details their occupations, which tend to cluster in marketing, e-commerce, coaching, and technology. It then explains the role of coworking spaces in the digital nomad ecosystem and the processes through which digital nomads build and sustain their work-centric community. Many of the more successful nomads continue to work side-by-side with those who are just starting out in this lifestyle. The informal social environment of coworking is supplemented by formal skill share events on topics like quitting one’s job, blogging, coding, podcasting, social media, outsourcing, team-building, partnering, getting investors, and finance that give nascent entrepreneurs opportunities to learn from the community. Bali is a place where people easily find cheerleaders, advisors, and helpers as they pursue their professional dreams.

Community practice is identified most frequently as the management of change, inter-agency working, community profiling, social auditing, partnership work, consulting service users, working with voluntary sector organisations, understanding and working with different ethnic, cultural and religious groups, research methodologies and community consultation. This book aims to address those people who are managing these processes. It is highly relevant to managers of community workers and community development workers, but above all it is aimed at those managers in the fields of health, planning, economic development, environmental work, social work, youth work, policing, community safety or education who have a brief to develop and implement community policies. The book also contributes towards equipping managers to face the new challenges presented by the continuing development of a community focus in public policy.

In this chapter, Robert Pinker explains the main reasons for his dissent to the Report of the Working Party on the Role and Tasks of Social Workers, also known as the Barclay Report. The working party, headed by Peter Barclay, was established in 1980 ‘to review the role and tasks of social workers in local authority social services departments and related voluntary agencies in England and Wales and to make recommendations’. The Barclay Report argued that social work was necessary, but urged a new emphasis on ‘community social work’. Pinker was opposed to the neighbourhood social care model proposed by Roger Hadley and the community social work model. He argues that the report's proposal was a prescription for managerial chaos. Pinker concludes with a discussion of the implications of the Barclay Report for the education and training of social workers.

This chapter explores how the Industrial Areas Foundation has developed its international affiliate programme. The first part of the chapter looks at community organising in the UK in the context of the development of British community work. Particular focus is given to Citizens UK. The second part of the chapter explores community organising in Australia, in particular the Sydney Alliance.

This chapter discusses the values and principles vital for shaping how community social work practice is carried out when addressing Latino small businesses. The four key values in implementing community social work practice are social justice, self-determination, community well-being, and community assets. With regards to practice principles, five are derived from a variety of scholarly and practices sources. First, all communities, regardless of socioeconomic circumstances, possess inherent assets. Second, communities must play influential roles in the decision making process pertaining to intervention goals. Third, communities are the best experts on their conditions and circumstances. Fourth, Latino small businesses must be viewed from a multifaceted perspective that stresses economic/operational, cultural, and social capital dimensions. Finally, sustainable community-focused initiatives in support of Latino small businesses are best achieved through meaningful collaboration. These values and principles take on a synergistic effect when all of them are present and interacting with one another.

In Britain, ruling politicians have constructed a system that is rhetorically defined as choice and control, but which, in reality, is far from that. Resistance to this system is essential for radical social work because the EasyCare model constructs a system that is outside of the values, traditions, and ethos of professional social work. This chapter discusses the positive alternatives to the defensive practice required of (in particular) local-authority-based social workers. It approaches radical resistance and positive radical practice based on Radical social work. The chapter examines the main themes from the book and brings them into the contemporary context, including individualism, social workers making alliances with new movements, radical social work as a critique of the history of the welfare state, the persistence of poverty, cultural diversity, social-work education, community work, and educating the public about the social-work role. It advocates examples of radical practice for today, including ideas for action that are feasible in most organisations where social workers are employed and in which students carry out their practice learning.

This prelude provides an overview of the author's research conducted at Park Central School in Worcester, Massachusetts. The idea was to give kids cameras to record, represent, and reflect on their everyday lives. The goal was that their photos will serve as a window onto the school culture, and at the same time allow the author and her colleagues to ask other, more complex questions. The author and the principal of PCS, Dr. Galinsky, both agree that there is tremendous value in listening to kids' voices as a way to help educators improve teaching and learning. Thus, the author planned to use the children's photographs and recorded interviews about their images as materials that will engage graduate students and teachers-in-training in assessing their own ways of seeing, and perhaps questioning their own assumptions about children growing up in working-class and immigrant communities of color. A key discovery of this research is the centrality and saliency of how care matters in childhood, in development, and in schooling from kids' own perspectives.

This chapter explores how the concept of social capital can be adapted and employed as a tool for participative evaluation of community-based work. It considers social capital as an excellent framework for evaluation and one which allows people to demonstrate the impact of their work with communities and inform their own practice and project development. It notes that the key feature of the framework is that learning must be shared. It highlights the need to offer training to local participants about social capital, employ local people or community members as workers, adopt a flexible and responsive management style, support the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data, and provide long-term funding for initiatives.