SOWO 239Community Practice Models/Theories and Social Capital

Lecture V

Community Practice Models/Theories

Social Work

Ministering to the individual needs (health, family development, recreation, aid for indigent, aged, etc.)

Ministering to community (??)

Community Development

Planned action to address people’s concerns in a defined area

Community Practice Models/Theories Determining “What is Seen as Valued” in a Community

Coping strategies

Alternative Leadership Patterns

Practicing Life With and Among People

Community Capacity?? How much should/can local leaders lead?

Personal Observations: Possibility for error/bias?

Application of theories/practice from similar settings.

Applicability of “Grounded Theory”

Community Practice Models/Theories

Can We All Get Along?

Schools of Social Work Setting Up Own Field Units???

Pros

Control of the practicum experience

Up-to-date applications from “best social work/human service practices”

Direct involvement in SSW communities

Community Practice Models/Theories Cons

Strained relationships with area social work organizations, nonprofits, and other human service organizations

Lack of direct connection to the variety of social work problems being addressed by other agencies/organizations?

Units of Focus

Identity

Practice

Solution

Community Practice Models/Theories Who Defines Community

Internal Leaders

External Leaders

Community Social Work Practice

Skills

Cultural Awareness

Needs Assessment

Applying Social Work Theories to Practice

Poverty and Community Poverty Results From a “Deficit” in:

Income?

Mainstream Values?

Persistent Poverty

Concentrated Poverty

The “Underclass”

Welfare Reform Policy Temporary Assistance to Needy Families

(TANF), 1988

Learnfare

Bridefare

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996)

Faith-Based Remedies to Poverty

When Affirmative Action Was “White” U. S. Government Allocated more than $100 billion between

the latte 1930s-1955 to Support

SOCIAL SECURTIY most work done by minorities—farm and domestic work-- not covered

PROTECTIVE LABOR LAWS excluded minorities

JOB TRAINING excluded minorities

HOME OWNERSHIP loans rarely given to minorities

GI BILL

JOB CEILINGS

Asset Building: Saving, Investing, Education?

Will asset-building work for the poor?

Changing Context of Community Practice Historical models

Multicultural Context

Feminist and Human Rights Context

21st Century Practice Models

Neighborhood/ Community Organizing

Functional Communities: Organizing the Poor?

Social and Economic Development

Social Planning for the Poor

Program Development and Community Liaison

Politics and Social Action

Coalitions, Social Movements

Development Theory and Community Practice

Development Theory

Community Development

Theoretical influences on Community Development

Developmentally Focused Practice

Applying Developmentalism

Social Investment and Community Development

Social Capital

What is social capital

Social capital is decomposable into two elements:

The social relationship itself that allows individuals to claim access to resources possessed by their associates

The amount and quality of those resources Bourdieu (1980, 1985)

Strengths-Based

Social capital focuses attention on the positive consequences of sociability, while putting aside it’s less attractive features in assessment.

It emphasizes those positive consequences in the framework of a broader discussion of capital and calls attention to how such non-monetary forms can be important sources of power and influence, such as cultural capital and informal supports.

Relationships

Economic capital is in people’s bank accounts, human capital is in their heads, and social capital exists in the structure of relationships

To possess social capital, a person must be related to others, and it is those others and not himself/herself who are the actual source

Social Capital Has Three Basic Functions As a source of control

As a source of family support

As a source of benefit through extra-familial networks

Social Capital As A Source of Control Parents, teachers, police to seek to maintain

discipline and promote compliance among those under their charge

Bounded in solidarity and enforceable trust

Social control leads to the disappearance of those informal family and community structures that produce social capital

Social Capital: A Source of Family SupportSources of parental and kin support

Intact families, and those where one parent has the primary task of rearing children, possess more of this form of social capital than do single-parent families, or those where both parents work?

McLanahan & Sandefur’s (1994) monograph, Growing up with a Single

Parent, examines the consequences of single parenthood for school achievement and attrition, teenage pregnancy, and other adolescent outcomes

Social capital is often lower for children in single parent families

that lack the benefit of a second at-home “parent,” and have high residential mobility--- leading to fewer “ties” to adults in the community

Familial Support

Parcel & Menaghan (1994) examined the effects of parent work on children’s cognitive and social development

They concluded that parents’ intellectual and other resources contribute to the forms of family capital useful in facilitating positive outcomes for children

They also found that common beliefs about a negative effect of maternal work during infancy are over-generalized

Familial support

Multiple family moves impacts children’s emotional adjustment and educational achievement?

Leaving a community tends to destroy established bonds and deprive family and children of major sources of social capital?

Parental support of child development is a source of cultural capital

Social Capital As A Source of Benefits Through Extra-familial Networks Carol Stack (1974), All Our Kin, explains everyday

survival in poor urban communities frequently depends on close interaction with kin and friends in similar situations

The problem is that these ties seldom reach beyond the inner city, thus depriving their inhabitants of sources of information about employment opportunities and ways to attain them

Movement out of Black inner city areas have left the remaining population bereft of social capital, leading to high levels of poverty, unemployment, and welfare dependency

Extrafamilial networks Valenzuela & Dornbush (1994) highlight the role of

family networks and a family orientation in the academic achievement of Mexican-origin students

Immigrant families compensate for the absence of the “outside networks” form of social capital

There is an emphasis on social capital in the form of familial support, including preservation of the cultural orientations of their home country

The Communitarian Perspective The communitarian view of social capital emphasizes the

number and density of local organizations (e.g., clubs, associations, etc.)

The prevailing opinion is that social capital is inherently good, that more is always better, and that the presence of social capital will always have a positive effect on a community’s welfare (Woolcock & Narayan, 2000)

This perspective has built in a risk and resilience analytic perspective on poverty by stressing the centrality of social ties in helping poor families manage risk and vulnerability

The Communitarian Perspective (cont’d)

However, a major shortcoming of the communitarian view of social capital is that it assumes that communities are homogeneous and that all members are provided the same opportunities and benefits

Some families involved in the combination of substance abuse, incarceration, and kinship care may be experiencing discrimination and poverty disproportionate to others in their own communities

Methodologically, in the communitarian view, social capital is an independent variable which produces various outcomes

The Network Perspective

This network view recognizes that strong intra-community ties give families and communities a sense of identity and common purpose (Woolcock & Narayan)

A challenge to the network view of social capital is to identify the

conditions under which the positives of building social capital in poor families and communities can be harnessed and its integrity retained

At the same time, we must help the family and community gain access to formal, mainstream institutions

The Synergy Perspective

Integrates the work emerging from the network and institutional perspectives

Based upon principles in anthropology and comparative political economy, the synergy view was examined to determine conditions that foster working together

Institutional Perspective

Emphasizes the political, legal, and economic environments in the development of family and community networks

Unlike the communitarian and network perspectives, the

institutional view measures social capital as a dependent variable

This institutional view seems to assume equal access to

institutions, which would not include circumstances facing the disadvantaged poor or families from other cultures

The Synergy Perspective

Evans (1996) concludes that the synergy view is based on complementarity and embeddedness

Complementarity refers to mutually supportive relations between private and public actors and is exemplified in institutional frameworks that facilitate exchanges and protect the rights of association

Embeddedness refers to the nature and extent of these

complementary ties Building social capital suggests that different

interventions are needed in different combinations to meet the needs of individuals, families, neighborhoods and communities

The Synergy View Suggests Three Central Tasks To identify the nature and extent of social relationships and

formal institutions, and the extent of the interaction between them

To develop institutional strategies based on these social

relations, particularly the extent of building social capital

To determine how the positive manifestations of social capital (cooperation, trust, and institutional efficiency) can offset sectarianism, isolationism, and corruption (Woolcock & Narayan, 2000)--related to a risk and resiliency perspective