As mentioned earlier, for community organization method, the community is the client. Just as the other methods of case work and group work, the method of community organisation also strives to solve the problems and fulfill the needs of its ‘client’, which is the community.
It is also concerned with:
a) the release of its latent potentialities;
b) the optimalised use of its indigenous resources;
c) the development of its capacity to manage its own life; and
d) the enhancement of its ability to function as an integrated unit.
The end goal is the development of self confidence and self help; the emergence of cooperative and collaborative attitudes, skills and behaviour, which then form the basis of sustainable action and change in the client system.
Like the other methods, community organization also relies on similar assumptions, namely the dignity and worth of the client, the resources possessed by the client to deal with its own problems; the inherent capacity that the ‘client’ possesses for growth and development;
and the ability to choose wisely in the management of its own affairs. A case worker assumes that often
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individuals become overwhelmed by the complexities of life and thereby become psychosocially paralysed, which in turn curtails their own capacity for response by way of action. But with appropriate facilitation, this stage can be overcome, and the normal process of growth can be resumed for the individual concerned. Moreover, like the case worker who accepts the client as he/she is;
develops a professional relationship with the client;
starts from where the client is; and helps the client to become functional and autonomous, the community organizer also has the same general orientation and relies on a similar approach in working with the community, which is the client for him/her.
Community organisation therefore shares a common base, and a common core of philosophy and method with case work and group work. It is also committed towards solving problems and facilitating change in the client system. The nature of problems dealt with in the context of Indian communities relate to poverty, unemployment, exploitation, lack of access to basic services and denial of social justice/rights. The problems may also be more group specific i.e. as they relate to particular groups like women, children, youth, elderly or the backward classes.
While there are common objectives, assumptions and certain generalized approaches to be followed by all social work practitioners, there are also significant differences between community organization and the other methods. As the social work practitioner moves from the general to the specific context, he/she has to develop certain distinctive ways of dealing with the problems of the individual, the group and the community. In addition to the fact that some of the same insights and methods develop differently in different settings, each process has distinctive insights and methods of its own.
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Since the worker in community organization works on a larger canvas, he/she is (a) concerned with the different sub-groups and sub-cultures within the same;
(b) has to develop insights about the value systems, behaviour patterns, social organization, formal and informal leadership as they pertain to the diverse groups;
(c) understand the interests and problems that these groups have in common; and (d) assess the degree of cooperation and competition that exist in them. The methods of understanding and operation used will therefore be different from that of the case worker or the group worker.
In any process of problem solving there are three basic steps viz. study, diagnosis and intervention/treatment.
First, the problem has to be studied by collecting information. From this information, the main causes leading to the problem have to be identified. This step is referred to as ‘diagnosis’. Based on the diagnosis, a solution or intervention is evolved called ‘treatment’. In any context, problems can be solved only after following this three step procedure.
In the context of a community, this problem solving procedure can be used only with the collective involvement of the people who are individually and collectively the stakeholders in the causation and the solution of the specific problem being dealt with. For e.g. people in a certain community may be confronted with the problem of high incidence of morbidity. With the help of the community organiser this problem first has to be studied. The link between the commonly prevalent disease/s and their causal factors may be established. In case these causal factors are related to the accumulation of stagnant water in the open drains outside the houses and/or an ineffective system of garbage collection, then it is only with peoples’
participation that a treatment/intervention can be
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devised. The latter will be in the shape of a collective endeavour at the level of all the people affected by the problem, whereby a participatory system of garbage collection/disposal and timely cleaning of the community drains can be established. The lesson learnt through this illustration is that often problems confronting individual members of the community have their roots in the community and therefore their solution also lies in the community. Unless the community works out a collective solution and acts on it, problems such as the one illustrated above cannot be solved.