A complex social problem can only be resolved by using an approach that engages and mobilizes all the people to work towards an effective and enduring solution. Social-work community practices utilize various tactics targeted at inciting change within a community to better the situation of the inhabitants. This essay provides an analysis of different community practice methods, including Community Organization, Social Planning, Social Action, Community Development, and Participatory Action Research (PAR), as well as the effectiveness of these approaches in addressing the issue of homelessness, which is one of the most widely-spread social problems affecting the life of the urban population across many U.S. locations.
Community Practice Approaches in Social Work
Community organization is a bottom-up strategy that aims to engage community members and integrate their resources to accomplish the desired objectives. The provision is frequently performed through advocacy, community education, and infrastructure development, the main factors contributing to the feeling and unity of community and collective Action.
Social Plan instead is the more detailed and technical approach, which involves structuring the possible needs in the community and developing detailed plans to meet those needs. This strategy demands specific training in research and policy analysis (Glicken, 2010), aiming not only to make it through quickly but also to make the solutions already effective.
Social Action creates a level playing field to help take a stand for those oppressed and suffering from inequality. It is defined as an approach that prioritizes the participation of Community Members in protests and feedback loops in the quest to address and restructure existing power dynamics and realize social change.
Community development focuses on increasing communities’ inner strength and resilience using economic development, advocacy, and training and improving the infrastructure. This approach parallels the participatory processes where the people are active, and the development is sustainable at the grassroots level. Achievements focus on a better life for the community.
Community Action Research, which consists of community members in the research process, helps identify problems, seek solutions to problems, and make community changes. Its focus on partnership, empowerment, and the utilization of research as a way of community fellowship and problem-solving is the main feature of the community-based idea.
Comparison and Contrast
The approaches vary in how they carry out their activities and their focus on different areas. While community organization and social planning serve as critical functions of community practice, how they do it varies; the participative and grassroots approach represented in the first leads to issuing technical and top-down approaches depicted in the second. Social Action and Community Development deal with the stages that are the sites of the objectives to create new structures (Glicken, 2010). Community participation brings together the aspects of the other methods. However, it is an exceptional approach linked to the focus on research as an engagement tool and active community participation.
Application to Homelessness
The homelessness phenomenon serves as a complex societal problem involving various aspects demanding a holistic and multifaceted solution. Homelessness is not only about the absence of dwelling, but it is also comprehensively connected to challenges like the lack of low-cost accommodations, joblessness, mental health issues, and drug addiction (Glicken, 2010). Seismic solutions against the homelessness problem cannot be effective only by providing shelter and healthcare services. However, it must also get involved in the fight against these root causes.
Why Community Development?
Among these Approaches, however, Community Development seems to appear as the most appropriate coping strategy to deal with the multifarious and impelled social problem of homelessness. This approach fits nicely into the two components of the homeless problem: the present requirements of people among people without housing and the long-term goal of preventing this homelessness. It underscores the focus on grassroots participation and direct involvement of the community, thus making possible uniquely community-specific applications with the people’s support they need (Glicken, 2010). The approach that involves sustainability, comprehensiveness, empowerment, and flexibility is the main characteristic, which is very important for fighting homelessness where immediate measures need to be taken, and long-term strategies also play a significant role in resolving the issue’s main causes
Conclusion
Although there are various methods for covering the community’s practices, managing complex social situations, including homelessness, requires comprehensive, multifaceted, sustainable, and empowering strategies. The Community Development approach is an inclusive framework of responding to the immediate needs of homeless persons and catalyzing permanent change through local infrastructure development, capacity building, and supporting services improvement. Through the means of community participation and the empowerment process, this approach inculcates a feeling of belonging among all the members the society, as well as a sense of commitment towards the betterment of all the residents in the area; thereby, it is a powerful strategy for overcoming the problems of homelessness and being a society that is inclusive and supportive.
References
Glicken, M. D. (2010). Social work in the 21st century: An introduction to social welfare, social issues, and the profession. Sage.
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