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.
Analyse the roles of social workers in and with co...
Learning Outcome 01
Propose strategies to work with communities to ide...
Learning Outcome 02
Propose engagement strategies for Aboriginal and T...
Learning Outcome 03
Identify and respond to personal values and ideolo...
Learning Outcome 04
Engage with community organisations to plan and ev...
Learning Outcome 05
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
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment strategy aims to prepare students to develop academic and practice skills through reflection, review and analysis of good practice community development approaches. Assessment that requires students to work in small groups allows assessment of good practice community development approaches and 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. 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.
Students must demonstrate achievement of every unit learning outcome, pass the 80% attendance hurdle and obtain a minimum mark of 50% in graded units in order to pass this unit.
Overview of assessments
Reflective Journal Students are provided with the...
Reflective Journal
Students are provided with the opportunity to demonstrate their reflection on good practice approaches in community development.
30%
Group Project Presentation Enables students to...
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%
Critical Analysis Drawing on theories of communit...
Critical Analysis
Drawing on theories of community development, students are provided with the opportunity to critically analyse a community development project.
40%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit involves a combination of prerecorded lectures, small group workshops and engagement with Canvas. The unit entails engagement with human service and community organisations.
Workshops 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.
ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS OF UNIT
This Unit incorporates professional social work skills-based teaching and learning, and therefore has an attendance requirement of a minimum of 80% attendance at weekly lectures and the skill development and practice tutorials.
An attendance record for weekly tutorials and community engagement activities will be kept.
Reasons why attendance is required
In workshops you will be interacting with other students and developing skills which you will use in your professional experience. Students who do not attend are at risk of not developing the required knowledge and essential skills, needed to demonstrate unit learning outcomes. In particular, attendance is required so students participate and support their peers in groupwork (assessment 2) and in the engagement with the community organisation (LO 5). As this attendance hurdle task relates to a student’s attendance, there is only one attempt available to meet this requirement.
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
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