Paradoxes faced by community development practitioners
Discuss about the Community Development for European Planning Studies.
Community development practitioners are the social workers who work for the betterment of the society. The paper deal with the facts that these community development practitioners in their daily activity need to face various paradoxes as well as challenges in their actions which they need to overcome. The detail discussion on the various contradiction as well as the challenges that are faced by the social workers is being provided in the essay to understand their process and their nature of service within the society.
In practice, it can be seen that there are numerous dilemmas as well as paradoxes in the evaluation of human service along with the community development. These dilemmas, as well as the paradoxes, create the enormous difficulties and for that, it is essential for the practitioners to select the response in the most effective way. The primary paradox that is being faced by the community development practitioners is regarding the outcome of their activity (Pugalis and Keegan 2017). It can be seen that the outcome that they are going to achieve through their community development is not known. It can also happen that the outcome that they are going to achieve is quite difficult to define it in a precise way. This paradox is quite disturbing for the community development practitioners as they can effectively estimate their outcome but could not exactly determine what is going to happen. Moreover, it is also seen that the specific outcomes which the practitioners want to achieve in their work most of the time get differ from the activity and the value that they hold. The people who are involved in the service process moth of the time have a different value on the activity and this is another paradox of outcome for the community developers (Houte et al. 2015). The fact is clear that while working for the development of community it is quite difficult to judge the outcome of the process.
Another paradox that is being faced by the practitioners is regarding the nature of the service process that also from the client point of view. The primary contradiction and dilemmas in this are to figure out who is the exact client. This is due to the facts that there are different viewpoints on the existence of the client. It can be seen that the client could be the adult family member, or the child or the extended family and so on. In this, another dilemma is the server process that is being provided to the client as it can differ from the various service within the market. It is quite a contradiction process where the service process varies in a vast way (Roth 2015). In this, the clients also have issues with the process as most of the time they want the different things that are being provided in the service process. The contradiction is in every step while performing as the community development practitioners (Chandler 2015). It can be seen that the people in the service process generally are the part of the friends, families, and work team and so on. These also have the huge chance for the creation of paradox in the development process as each of them has a different view on the outcome and the working process within the community.
Challenges faced by community development practitioners
Another paradox is regarding the nature of the service process but from the service point of view. It can be seen that it is quite difficult to show the cause or the relationship between the service and the outcome. It can be seen that service is the general part of the service network. In this, another dilemma that is being faced by the practitioners is that most of the service staff are a focus on the individual clients and for that contradiction is created among the clients and the service staff in the community development process. This is due to the facts that various people have a different view on the service and the working function for the development of the community. There are various approaches that lead to the measurement of outcome for the services that are being provided in the community work. It can be seen that the working function of the firm needs to be developed in the most effective and the suitable way of performing various actions in the field. The contradiction can be visualized in this case that the service and the outcome of the service are not generally determined. In a maximum number of cases the entire process could be easily estimated and for that the dilemmas or the contradiction in the community activity took place.
The paradoxes for the community development practitioners is huge in the daily activity as it can be seen that there is a huge conflict between the demand for the good service as well as the delivery practice (Roy and Buchanan 2016). It is clearly stated that the working function of the firm is one of the best ways to deal with various actors in the field but most of the time it creates a huge contradiction in the process. Then there is language problem or the communication understanding problem. It can be seen that dilemmas are created in most of the obvious way while working in the community. It is clear that communication is the biggest factor but most of the time it creates confusion and from that, the paradoxes are being created. The conflicting demand within the client, as well as the process of data collection for the development activity, also create contradiction for performing various actions in the field (Karvinen-Niinikoski 2016). It can be seen that the facts are clear for the process to have an effective and valuable solution within the market for the development of the various actors. For the community development practitioners dealing with the paradoxes is one of the biggest issues as this lead to the various actors in the field. All the contradiction of the social workers needs to be maintained to provide suitable and valuable development of the society.
There are various challenges faced by the community practitioners on developing a community in the area. The community practitioners mainly face problem on ensuring a proper representative for the community. The author stated that not every member participated in the program at the same level and only some of the people engaged in the programs. For this, the community development members face the problem as they could not involve all the members engaged in the program. Nowadays for diminishing this problem, they appointed a hardworking people who have a proper knowledge of tackling people as the head (Blichfeldt and Halkier 2014). While it can be seen that diverse group of communities are present worldwide so no powerful voice or group should be engaged in the community. This means that the community practitioner should welcome all people irrespective of class, caste, people having disabilities, come from diverse background etc. This causes the problem for them as they cannot decide properly to whom they choose for the community head as many people offended to work with another community member in the society and also in the workplace. Along with this, the community views should be established by which one can separate the opinions of each community members and also the collective views of the group can be determined. If a good understanding is present in the group member then producing their collective ideas does not make a problem while if they do not conclude with the same thing then a conflict arises between them.
This is one of the reasons that the community development practitioners face problem in their work. Thus for diminishing the problem every member of the families should need to make proper contact with the other family members so that the issue faced by the community development practitioners will reduce. It is seen that involving a large number of community members in partnership and decision-making process can make a dangerous effect and this may cause stress, chaos, and exhaustion in the whole society (Gousios et al. 2015). It has been seen that the community members are dependent on few leaders while this should be avoided so that the community development members do not face this challenges in their work. Although the community member should increase their building capacity across the wide range of community leaders for decreasing the issue. It has been noticed that the community partnership and engagement cannot become a sustainable and standard process and for this, the members depend on the personal relationships that build between the professionals and other community members. This is one of the most crucial challenges faced by the community development professionals. One of the major challenges faced by the community development practitioners is the lack of engagement and partnership among the community member.
Community involvement mainly relates to the process that operates at a local level. Since the absence of the proper relationship between the community members the community development practitioners faces many problems in their working process. The mobilization strategies have an effective action on the community procedure and these strategies are considered as the lifeline of community development practitioners (Van Der Schoor and Scholtens 2015). As per the strategy, the community members maintain a good partnership among themselves and made new building models. This gives good results but the strategy makes a big issue in the sector as the member though lots amount of time and energy are wasted by them. Along with this absence of debate causes poverty, social exclusion and inequality among the members and as per them these strategies give a negative impact on their social life and hence it is also considered as one of the main challenges faced by the community development member in their working procedure. The improvement of poverty cannot be solved at the local level and for solving this strong connection should be made between the national and local level member. Since this is not easy for the community development practitioner to maintain a good relation to the national level and although the anti-poverty strategy is used it does not give a successful result in the society (Claps, Svensson and Aurum 2015). Moreover, the community practitioner commitment at the national level is not evidently clear and thus a mistrust between the member of a local and national level has been created. Due to such issue, a negative impact occurs in the society and for this, the community development practitioner faces many problems in their work.
Although they make effective models that can increase the interaction between the local and the national people but it needed a huge amount of time and resources for implementation of this procedure. It has been evaluated that many community development officers involve in the delivery of services and thus help them to secure their resources. As per the strategy their resources will support their work and help them to bring changes in the society (Khanlou and Wray 2014). Although it is not so much easy to maintain both types of activities in a single firm while service delivery being easier but the problem arises from getting proper resources after that. Since the Community Development Program and Local Development Social Inclusion Program gives a huge support to the community development practitioners to overcome the issue but it does not properly reduce the problem (Partridge et al. 2015). It has been noticed that the community officer is labor concentrated and building trust in between the people of different community becomes a difficult job for them. Along with this increase of self-confidence in between the members becomes a time taking and resource consuming process and in this case the community development practitioners’ faces problem. Thus for diminishing this problem proper step should be used by the community development practitioners.
Conclusion
The paper concluded that the paradox and contradictions make a huge effect on the community development practitioners. It is seen that a conflicting demand arises between the delivery process and thus the outcomes achieved after the services offered by the community members gives a different view. Along with this many other challenges are faced by the community officer in their working procedure and this affected the whole working process in the organization.
Reference
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