Comunity organization practice

Social casework, social group work, and community organization have long been accepted as the basic methods of social work practice. Social casework was the first of the three to be identified as a process which could be described, which could be examined systematically, and which could be trans mitted by educational methods to students preparing for the field of social work. Next, social group work was subjected to analysis and now has a substantial body of professional literature to justify its place in programs of professional education for the field.

Similar study of community organization is of comparatively recent origin. It has been stimulated, no doubt, by the increasing use of community organization skills in related areas of community planning and by the interest of the profession of social work in defining the nature of the community organization process within the field of social work, so that standards of performance and prep aration might be developed. A basic text in community organization practice thus fills an important need.

The existing literature reveals widely divergent concepts of the scope and nature of community organization in social work. Among the contributions of the present volume is an orderly presentation of points of view of leaders in the field. For the first time, students will grasp with fair ease the segmental nature of achievement in developing a theoretical basis for the practice of community organ ization. Unrelated as these segments may be, when viewed as a whole and analyzed by the author they are seen as the beginning of a systematic approach to the development of a body of theory.