Social Work Methods and Intervention Units in Society with community and Organization

Social Work Practice With Community and Organization

“Community is an area of social living marked by some degree of social coherence.”

-MacIver

In the community, a member of the society living together, having an emotional attachment, and fulfill the basic condition of common life that we call community. Lundberg defined the community differently he argued that “community is a human population living in the limited geographic area and carrying on independent life. Community posses some unique characteristics like primacy, locality, similarity, emotional attachment, and homogeneity in term of language, dress and food habits, dominance of relationship, social control and importance of family.

Along with the changes in the world, there is vast changes the community structure due to the influence of the industrialization. Community changes “Gemeinschaft (traditional) changes into Gesellschaft (modern). Modern society changes into more industrialization or specific in term of the division of labor that causes community problem in a real sense. People are disintegrated, people of detachment homogeneity and change into heterogeneity, community member seems more selfish in compare to the past. In order to relief, the people organize them into one.

As Walter A. Friedlander says

“The professional workers uses himself intervene in the ongoing processes of groups or individuals who wish to set organizing processes into motion towards the community welfare goal (1964)”.

Social workers applying the different skills in his varieties of the roles, assist the people to make them relief from the burden, works under the system of values or code of ethics, use the theoretical model and methods that enhance the capability of community people.

Working in the community more complicated because it included the wide verities of neighborhood, culture and religion where social worker diagnosis the problems, gather the facts, analyze it and work for the planned change. The social problem in the community cannot be solved by the single methods therefore Social workers need to be help from the different agencies, individuals and groups. In order to take positive change Social workers must have capability of coordinating, planning, implementing and evaluation the activities. All these activities must be based on the democratic principles in order to meet the directed goal.

Genevieve W. Carter (1964) categorized the activities of Social workers into different parts

1. organization activities
2. leadership promotional activities
3. coordinating activities
4. Public relation activities
5. educational activities
6. Budgetary activities
7. administrative writing activities
8. Research and fact-gathering activities.

• Organization activities:

Worker involves in the formal structure for the communication channel within the planning agency and within the community thought which related phase of work are arranged defined and coordinated (Carter, 1964). Social worker coordinating one group to another group through the communication.

• Leadership and promotional activities:

Social workers generate the leadership, arouse the interest among the community members. They actively enable community people through their participation. The creative and imaginative approaches are needed in community welfare. It is not necessary social workers have the monopoly in their ideas.

• Coordinating activities:

Social workers coordinating different parts of the community to make whole. Coordinating is essential in order to run the whole system. In addition, social worker actively involve the planning, policy making and financial management. It can be carried out through the media, minutes report, correspondence, personal conversation, conference, meeting, publication and research based work.

• Public relation activities:

Public relation influences the community people in real sense. It helps to initiate, interpret and make a decision of any work. The publication can be build up through media, meeting, seminar, press conference, radio, television and other activities.

• Educational activities:

The social worker works as a teacher so he teaches several moral lesson and information with the community people. His service always pays for motivation to the community people, their activities carried out for a long run.

• Budgetary activities:

The social worker should work for the welfare based programs as well as for the proper implication of Budget.

• Administrative writing activities:

Writing activities within the administrative work is significant.

Genevieve W. Carter (1964) writes

“There are other important writing activities that precede the final report: minutes, agenda for a meeting, a community organization, prospect report, letter, preliminary report and work material for discussion meeting.”

A business man benefited from the summary report. Social worker often prepares the report after they formulated policies. Writing minute recorded the important decision of the meeting like agenda for decision and final decision carried out by the committee which will be benefited for the final formulation of a policy statement.

There are some other record keeping systems within community organization that is within the scope of office administration. These may include developing the central filing system for all correspondence and materials, as well as the code of filing materials with specialized content.

• Research and fact-gathering activities:

Genevieve W. Cater writes,

“The unique characteristics for the community organization researcher are not in the doing of the research, but in how the research process is integrated into the community organization.”

Through the research social worker finds out overall administrative as well as the socio-cultural impact on the community. A social worker can carry out survey finding by developing a particular service to meet the demand of people.

Organization

“An organization is an articulation of different part which performs various functions; it is an active group device for getting something done”.

Ogburn & Nimkoff

Organization means association where status and role of the people clearly defined. In the ancient period, most of the people lived in small groups of the family, friends and neighbor. However, in the modern society people live in the formal organization in order to meet their demand. There is agreement and consciousness in an organization which may either in verbal and written code. In any organizations, there is interrelation of the politics, economy, and cultural values which have been embedded in the society.

Some characteristics of the organizations as

• Division of labor based on sex, class, race, age and religion
• Formal and informal rules and regulation
• Social hierarchy
• Based on the specific goal
• Assign the authority to the certain members
• Control the human behavior
• There is rule of interdependence
• Security of individual in some extent.

When there is a problem in organizational management, function, assignment, adjustment and exclusion of its members in such situation social worker can intervene to control its mechanism in decent order. They can motivate, inspire and facilities the organization for the well-being of the organizations. Excluding women in any company means ignores the talents of the half population. The problem of alienation frequently observed all most all the formal and informal organization. Above mentioned problem resulted in the unproductive, incompetence, inefficiency, instability, alienation, economic depletion and stagnation, weaken the social harmony and uprooted the societal norms and values.

Types of organization

The modern civilized society is characterized by a large number of organizations. Our society in a way is an organizational society. The term organization is used in different ways to mean different things. Organizations are human association for achieving goal. They are important at every level of human life. Sometimes, the word organization is used to refer to the associative groups. It’s a network of relationship among individuals working together. In terms of relationship organization can be classified into two types:

1. Formal organization
2. Informal organization

Formal organization

It represents those organizations which are characterized by a specific function, division of labor, hierarchy of authority, rationality and a paper arrangement of status and role. They are carefully planned and systematically worked out. They have their own norms and values and it should be registered in the concerned place. If the organization does not work according to its norms and values then, the problem will arise in functioning effectively.

Informal organization

It refers to the small group, the members of which are tied to one another. The group is characterized by informal and face to face in relation, mutual aid and cooperation. The members of work together not in their official capacities but informally as persons. They share their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows. The examples are groups such as bands, peer groups, friends, gangs, etc. The members of such group may always move, play, study together, their interest and attitude may also be more or less similar, and such groups represent informal organization. These may exist within the formal organization also. These may be formed on the basis of ethnic group, religion, caste, linguistic groups, regional origins, same schools and colleges from which they have passed.

Social workers responsibility in the formal and informal organization

• Defining the problems
• Defining the option
• Making a decision in appropriate time and condition
• Redefining the role and responsibility
• Reward and punishment of the organizations
• Planning
• Negotiation, interaction and communication to bring the structural change
• Give the feedback for the well-being of the organization
• control the system
• Facilitate the group members.

Reference-

Shrestha, S. K. (2013). the concept of social work. Kathmandu: Taleju, Prakashan