Social Work Skills for Community Practice

Focuses on skill-building to facilitate positive social change

With straightforward content enriched by practical and applicable learning experiences, this comprehensive text prepares social work students for careers in community organizing and macro practice. It focuses on building the social work skills required for organizing communities, including cause-based coalitions, geographically/identity-based communities, and health and human service organizations, to achieve culturally relevant, equity- and justice-driven social change. The second edition presents new information that includes self-care for the community practitioner, social work grand challenges, cultural humility, community dialogue, trauma-informed and resiliency-focused community development, environmental justice, and many other topics.

Emphasizing community practice through the application of macro, mezzo, and micro social work skills, the book uses frameworks drawn from generalist social work practice as well as core competencies identified by CSWE's EPAS. Its focus on a broad range of community practice models makes it accessible to all social workers. The text also highlights the importance of technology as a tool for social work macro practice with skill-building activities. Vivid case vignettes, applied and experiential learning activities, and team and individual-based assignments reinforce content and emphasize skill-building, along with abundant resources for further learning. Purchase includes digital access for use on most mobile devices or computers.

New to the Second Edition:

• Presents a framework for self-care for the community practitioner
• Highlights the importance of community practitioner readiness, competency, and leadership
• Introduces a new trauma-informed and resiliency-focused approach for community development
• Discusses strategic compatibility for interorganizational collaboration
• Introduces youth-based participatory research and empowerment evaluations

Key Features:

• Focuses on skill-building for community engagement and organizing, facilitating community dialogue, and conducting assessments
• Covers planning and implementing community change initiatives and evaluating and disseminating knowledge from change activities
• Provides case vignettes to reinforce content and abundant resources for additional learning
• Offers a complete ancillary package that includes chapter PowerPoints, Test Bank, and an Instructor's Manual with suggested individual and group activities and more

Mary-Ellen Brown, MSW, MPA, LCSW, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and the Founder/Director of the Office of Community Health, Engagement, and Resiliency at Arizona State University. Dr. Brown is also the Founder/Director of the national Center for Community Health and Resilience, a training and research center for Community Health Workers through SAMHSA's National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She is the chair of the Policy, Administration, and Community Practice Concentration Committee at ASU, and has over a decade of experience teaching macro social work courses including introductory macro practice, advanced community practice, program planning and evaluation, grant writing, administration, and leadership. Dr. Brown has been a community organizer, program manager, evaluator and researcher for nearly 20 years. She has a robust background in community health, positive youth development, nonprofit administration, and equitable, holistic place-based community development. Dr. Brown uses participatory action research to engage, mobilize, and strengthen or activate resilience in partnership with communities. Her scholarship has earned her recognition through several awards, including Social Worker of the Year (NASW-AZ, Branch II), the ACOSA Emerging Scholar Award (Association for Community Organization and Social Action), the Watts College Community Solutions Research Team Award and the ASU President's Medal for Social Embeddedness.

Katie Stalker, MSW, PhD, is an Associate Professor and the Director of Field Education at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. Dr. Stalker is passionate about macro social work practice and education. Her research focuses on youth violence prevention across the adolescent social ecology (i.e., juvenile justice, school, family settings) and implementation science for community-centered prevention. In her line of research focused on community-centered prevention, Dr. Stalker uses a Community-Based Participatory Research approach in which she examines social problems and co-develops solutions in local contexts through partnerships with communities. In her role as Director of Field Education, she continues her community-based work by collaborating with agencies and organizations in order to develop rich field placement opportunities that provide students with the opportunity to apply their classroom learning into social work settings.