engleski

Challenges of Community Practice in Deprived Communities

There is no country in the world that does not have a community that is considered deprived, disadvantaged, underdeveloped, vulnerable, remote and challenging. It may even become a symbol or a metaphor when one wants to emphasize development inequalities. Although we are aware of the problem, surprisingly there is a significant gap in the literature that didn’t provide a holistic approach to the topic nor there is conceptualized framework for community practice in these vulnerable contexts. For that reason, a group of authors has published an edited book Practicing Social Work in Deprived Communities: Competencies, Methods, and Techniques as a comprehensive overview that fulfils three major aims that will be discussed during this workshop. 1. We will provide holistic perspective that will help to understand ˝deprived community˝. Concretely, what is meant by this umbrella term, how community becomes and remains deprived and how community deprivation affects individual wellbeing. 2. We will explain important aspects of community practice in deprived communities – challenges in community processes and principles of development, importance of citizens engagement, development projects, social services and community reconstruction. 3. We will clearly send a message about necessity to empower community practitioners that work in these challenging communities. More specifically, we will address possibilities that help to overcome professional isolation, ethical issues of double-bind relationships, possibility of multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects, and how higher education institutions can give significant contribution. During this workshop, we will encourage participants to share their opinions and experiences. We will also discuss a possibility to conceptualise community practice in deprived communities as sub-specialization or specific field of community development practice. Finally, we will address how current global pandemic crisis and its aftermath will affect deprived communities and possibly increase inequalities and development gap on a global level

deprived community ; community work ; inequalities

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