Chapter 3 Community Theory: An Essential Component in Shaping Approaches to Community Assessment Communities can be understood as geographic entities or as groups that share a special concern or identity.

Communities can be understood as geographic entities or as groups that share a special concern or identity. Communities can be: Small (street block or neighborhood) Big (a metropolitan city like Winnipeg or Toronto) A geographical place A community of common interest (union or professional community). An ethno-cultural community (the Italian or Philipino Community)

Community Assessment/Intervention Improves quality of life and increases social justice through social and economic development, community organizing, social planning, and progressive social change. It is a cooperative effort between practitioners and affected individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and coalitions. Improving the quality of life for impoverished and vulnerable persons and communities means helping people help themselves to build resources and develop social and political power (Weil, 2005).

Assessment in Practice: Discovering and Documenting the Life of a community Assessment is very much related to the approach taken to community practice. Different types of community interventions, community development, community organizing, social planning, social action, and social change models involve different types of data collection, community engagement/mobilization processes, and methods of assessment (Weil, 2005, p. 151). Assessment is an important part of community practice intervention. In the initial stages of community practice, assessment frameworks can serve as a means of planning or a vehicle for information exchange as part of formal problem solving and as a way to determine which services are needed by whom. It can be used to foster community identification among the residents, and community engagement and mobilization in the change process.

Conclusions Approaches to community assessment are evolving to be more focused on dynamic iterative processes that are inextricably connected to the intervention process. Community practitioners need to become allies with the community residents in mobilizing, engaging, and building their capacity early in the assessment process. The rapid growth in communication and information technology can be incorporated into the assessment process to include marginalized minority groups in our increasingly more diverse communities. However, the rapid growth of technology has the potential either for extending the effectiveness of community social development practices or for perpetuating oppressive community structures. The challenge for community social workers continues to be one of reducing oppression and promoting a social justice orientation in the context of rapidly changing communities, societal values, and global contexts.