Year
2024Credit points
10Campus offering
Prerequisites
Nil
Teaching organisation
This unit involves a combination of face-to-face lectures, small group tutorials and Canvas. The unit entails 30 hours of community engagement activities with human service and community organisations.
Unit rationale, description and aim
Social workers are required to understand and respond to the interface between people and their social, cultural and physical environments. Social workers also respond to human needs in the context of socio-political and environmental factors. This unit introduces students to community development work as a method of social work practice. This unit focuses on developing knowledge and skills for practice with communities. The unit requires students to develop beginning level capacities to identify, analyse and critically evaluate the role of social work in professional practice with communities in Australia and internationally, with particular reference to community development. Through critical examination of a range of community projects, campaigns and initiatives, students will identify, and appraise a range of theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches, and ethical and values issues involved in social work with communities. Ethical issues in community work and particular themes for diverse populations, including rural communities, Indigenous populations, racially and ethnically diverse groups, and international communities, will be explored. This aim of this unit is to provide students with knowledge and skills in community work, an essential area of social work intervention and the profession's commitment to wellbeing and social justice, including community engagement activities that the opportunity to participate in a community project to put their theory and skills into action.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
| Learning Outcome Number | Learning Outcome Description | Relevant Graduate Capabilities |
|---|---|---|
| LO1 | Analyse the roles of social workers in and with communities in a variety of community contexts | GC1, GC9 |
| LO2 | Propose strategies to work with communities to identify strengths, diversity and build social capital in response to local needs | GC2, GC6 |
| LO3 | Propose engagement strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities and organisations | GC5 |
| LO4 | Identify and respond to personal values and ideologies and ethical issues in community practice | GC2, GC7 |
| LO5 | Engage with community organisations to plan and evaluate community interventions utilising appropriate theories and models of community work practice | GC4, GC8, GC11, GC12 |
AASW Practice Standards
This Unit has been mapped to the ACU Graduate Attributes and the ASWEAS Profession-Specific Graduate Attributes. The following table sets out the broad relationship between the Learning Outcomes, Graduate Attributes and the ASWEAS Profession-Specific Graduate Attributes provided in the Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards: https://www.aasw.asn.au/document/item/13565
1.Values and Ethics |
2.Professionalism |
3. Culturally responsive and inclusive practice |
4. Knowledge for practice |
5. Applying knowledge to practice |
6. Communication and interpersonal skills |
7. Information keeping and sharing |
8. Professional development and supervision |
ASWEAS Profession-Specific Graduate Attributes
This Unit has been mapped to the ACU Graduate Attributes and the ASWEAS Profession-Specific Graduate Attributes. The following table sets out the broad relationship between the Learning Outcomes, Graduate Attributes and the ASWEAS Profession-Specific Graduate Attributes provided in the Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards: https://www.aasw.asn.au/document/item/13565
| Standard/Attributes/Criteria | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|
1.1 Practise in accordance with the AASW Code of Ethics (2020) 1.2 Manage ethical dilemmas and issues arising in practice | 1 |
5.1 Assess and analyse needs to inform practice 5.2 Work collaboratively 5.3 Use a range of social work methods and techniques appropriate to the area of practice 5.4 Apply critical and reflective thinking to practice 6.1 Communicate with a diverse range of people 6.2 Communicate the details and nature of the service offered to people 6.3 Work with others in a team environment 6.4 Use information technology to communicate and provide services | 2 |
3.1 Work inclusively and respectfully with cultural difference and diversity 3.2 Respect and strive to understand and promote the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their cultures | 3 |
2.1 Represent the social work profession with integrity and professionalism 2.2 Behave in a professional manner and be accountable for all actions and decisions 3.1 Work inclusively and respectfully with cultural difference and diversity 3.2 Respect and strive to understand and promote the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their cultures 7.1 Record and manage information appropriately 7.2 Keep and maintain information in accordance with the ethical principles and relevant legislation 8.1 Actively participate in professional supervision 8.2 Engage in continuing professional development 8.3 Where appropriate, to contribute to the professional development of others | 4 |
4 .1 Understand higher level systemic influences on people with respect to area of practice 4.2 Understand and articulate social work and other relevant theories and concepts 4.3 Understand the role of research and evaluation in obtaining and generating new knowledge for practice 4.4 Understand and articulate how and when theories, knowledge bases and knowledge sources inform practice | 5 |
Content
Topics will include:
The Concept of Community
- The relationship between community work and social work
- Ethical issues in community work
- Differences between
- community development
- social development
- social action
- community organization
Contextualising Community
- Historical development of community work
- State intervention and the community
- Community as arena for social policy
Social Action
- Radicalism and community work
- Activism and the labour movement
- Social movements and building alliances (Australian and overseas examples)
- Activism and the social justice movement and the role of social media
Social Development
- Integrated development
- Concept of social planning
- International development
- Aid programs and developments
- Role of agencies
- World Bank
- Civil Society in Development
Community Organising
- Understanding community organisations
- Legitimacy
- Accountability
- Representativeness
- Engaging with a community
- Participation and power
- Identifying inequality and discrimination in communities
- Strategies for working together
- Collaboration or competition
Community Development in and with Diverse Communities
- Local communities
- urban
- rural
- International communities
- Working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities
- Social work practice with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
- Concept of community work in these contexts
- Understanding the community and self as practitioner
Doing Community Work
- Capacity Building
- Asset-Based Community (ABCD approach)
- Needs and Wants
- Doing a community profile
Community Development Roles and Skills in Social Work
Strategies:
- using the media
- lobbying
- funding
Evaluation in Social Work with Communities
- Program planning
- Evaluation in community organisations
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit involves a combination of face-to-face lectures, small group tutorials and Canvas. The unit entails engagement with human service and community organisations.
Tutorials will incorporate small group, collaborative learning with students engaging in active discussion of the theoretical unit content of community development, community capacity building, and asset-mapping of local communities. Virtual review of best practice community development initiatives will be utilised allowing students to better understand and explore good practice responses in building resilience and successful community development initiatives.
Students’ learning experience will significantly impact on their capacity in identifying good practice approaches, reviewing community issues and identifying their relevance to building competency and knowledge in community development.
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment strategy is to align assessments very closely to the learning outcomes. It aims to prepare students to develop academic skills through reflection, review and analysis of good practice community development approaches and working in small groups to reveal good practice community development approaches in group presentation.
The first two assessments comprise a reflective journal and group project presentation. These tasks assess students’ capacity to identify and reflect on good practice approaches in the field of community development. These directly relate to (LO2) examining strategies to work with communities to identify strengths, diversity and build social capital in response to local needs in the curricula. These assignments are authentic and adopt reflexive approaches key to social work with communities.
The third assessment directly assesses the ability of students to theorise about communities and ways to engage and work with communities. This assessment gives students an opportunity to articulate the importance of working with communities (LO5). Evidence of demonstrable competency and knowledge within these unit assessment tasks sets students on a successful path towards demonstrating sound understanding of and commitment to human needs in communities and exploration of good practice in capacity building with vulnerable communities.
Overview of assessments
| Brief Description of Kind and Purpose of Assessment Tasks | Weighting | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
Reflective Journal (1500 words) Students are expected to reflect on good practice approaches in community development. | 30% | LO1, LO4 |
Group Project Presentation Enables students to identify a good practice community development approach and present this approach to their peers and/or the agency they have been working with during their community project. | 30% | LO2, LO3, LO5 |
Critical Analysis (2000 words) Drawing on theories of community development, students learn to critically analyse a community development project. | 40% | LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4 |
Representative texts and references
Connolly, M., & Harms, L. (2013). Social work: Contexts and practice (3rd ed.). Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
Defilippis, J., & Saegert, S. (2012). The community development reader. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ife. (2016). Community development in an uncertain world : vision, analysis and practice (Second edition.). Cambridge University Press.
Kickett-Tucker, Bessarab, D., Coffin, J., Wright, M., & Gooda, M. (2017). Mia Mia Aboriginal Community Development : fostering cultural security . Cambridge University Press
Kenny, S. (2011). Developing communities for the future (4th ed.). Melbourne, Australia: Thomson.
O'Hara, A., & Pockett, R. (Eds.). (2011). Skills for human service practice (2nd ed). Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
Pawar, M. (2010). Community development in Asia and the Pacific. New York: Routledge.
Soni, S. (2011). Working with diversity in youth and community work. Exeter: Learning Matters.