Community Development

1. Community Development

2. Community Development • Community Services and Health is one of the most diverse industry groups in the Australian workforce. This industry is tipped to become the fastest growing industry in Australia in the next five years, which makes it an exciting and rewarding time to begin your training, or start working, in community services or health.

3. Community Development • Job Prospects • The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has advised that Community Development Workers have good job prospects. • Alternative Titles: Community Worker • Community Development Workers encourage and assist community groups to identify their needs, participate in decision-making and develop appropriate services and facilities to meet those needs.

4. Community Development • Community workers may perform the following tasks: • assist community groups in planning, developing, maintaining and evaluating community resources, programs and support networks • support, develop and evaluate strategies that encourage community participation in activities • research, analyse and assist council, town planning, corporate planning and environmental health departments in developing community service policies • communicate frequently with community groups, welfare agencies, government bodies, non-government organisations and private businesses about community services such as housing, health, welfare and recreation

5. Community Development • monitor, evaluate and recommend changes to community development programs, policies, practices or budgets • help raise community and public awareness on issues such as welfare rights by promoting, organising and/or helping to coordinate meetings and seminars • carry out administrative work which may include written correspondence, preparing submissions and reports for government bodies or other agencies and attending management meetings.

6. Community Development • The work of community workers involves considerable personal contact and travel within communities. They are normally expected to attend evening meetings and occasional weekend activities.

7. Community Development • Personal Requirements: • enjoy assisting people • able to work independently • able to work in cooperation with others • good work organisation and time management skills • able to relate to people effectively and patiently • able to manage and help resolve conflict • able to understand the issues and interests of the communities involved • good oral and written communication skills.

8. Community Development • What employment opportunities will I have? • This course will train students for work in community development worker positions. Some examples include: community/neighbourhood house coordinator, local government CD worker, migrant service worker, community housing worker, emergency accommodation worker, women's service worker, union organiser, environmental community worker, youth or disability program worker, community relations project worker, community policy and research officer or community education and training worker.

9. Community Development • WELFARE AND COMMUNITY WORKERS assist individuals, families and groups with social, emotional and financial difficulties to improve quality of life by educating and supporting them and working towards change in their social environment or facilitate community development initiatives and collective solutions within a community. • Size43,300 • WeeklyEarnings$950 • JobProspectsGood • KeyIndicators • Main EmployingIndustriesHealth and Community Services

10. Community Development • Occupation • 66% WorkingFull Time • 45 years Median Age • 23% males GenderBreakdown • Average Unemployment • Regional • * These figures cannot be used in determining a particular wage rate or as an indication of what a person will earn in that job.

11. Community Development • At a glance • The Community Services & Health Industry Skills Council (ISC) is the recognised peak national body providing advice on the training and skills development needs of the community services and health workforce to government and industry. • Community Services and Health Industries underpin the national economy and workforce, providing essential services for all Australians: They are central to the wellbeing and development of the whole Australian population and support the health and care of all people from pre-birth and childhood through to ageing and death.

12. Community Development • Third largest employer of Australians, providing jobs to 1.069 million people (10.4% workforce): They currently employ around 1.069 million Australians and cover over 350 separate occupations. Government is the main funding source and in some industry sectors also the main provider of service. Queensland Health, for example, is the largest employer in Queensland (65,000 jobs). Employers also include private business, non for profit and charitable organisations.

13. Community Development • Second fastest growing industries over the last 5 years: with 156 000 new jobs created. • Fastest industry growth rate predicted in next 5 years: (170,000 new jobs, which is approximately 34,000 per annum). This trend was predicted by DEWR (Australian Jobs 2005) to continue, fuelled by the demands of the ageing population, community demands for high levels of health care and growth in child care needs. Australian Jobs 2007 confirms these predictions.

14. Community Development • The employment landscape • Many occupations provide very good employment prospects: In the 2005 DEWR listing of ‘Occupations with Very Good Prospects’ 15 of a total 31 occupations are health related (more than in any other Australian industry), including: medical practitioners, medical imaging professionals, pharmacists, allied health workers (physiotherapists, podiatrists, speech pathologists etc), child care workers, aged and disabled carers, community and welfare workers, nurses, health information managers, ambulance officers/Paramedics, receptionists and complementary/alternative health practitioners. Many of the job roles at CS&H industries are at a vocational level, and can provide a career pathway to these professional roles.

15. Community Development • Current highest numbers of national and regional skills shortages: Four out of the top six professions assessed by DEWR  as having current national shortages fall within the health and community service industry (child care, registered nurses, enrolled nurses, health specialists). There are also widespread shortages in many occupations such as: pharmacists, dentists, medical imaging professionals, medical administration staff (medical records, receptionists, admissions), aged and disabled carers.

16. Community Development • Broad spread and variety of employment available across Australia: Employment is spread over all States and Territories in much the same proportion as employment overall, with 35% of jobs located outside capital cities. Good job opportunities in a variety of occupations exist across Australia in metropolitan, regional, rural and in some of the most remote areas. There are more than 300 Health and 200 Community Services separate occupations and skills are transportable and in demand both in Australia and overseas.

17. Community Development • The future: Variety of transition pathways and career awareness strategies available to build on: The VET in Schools program, ASBAs and career awareness strategies exist in aged care, community services, and childcare, and to some degree in health/nursing. There are a number of models targeting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. These provide building blocks for future growth.

18. Community Development • Demographics & Industry Statistics • Workforce demographics • Ageing workforce will create more vacancies: with 44% of workers aged over 45 or older, compared with 35% for all industries. There is a significant proportion of workers within 5 – 10 years of retirement, which means current staff turnover will create more job vacancies • Low numbers of young people in the health workforce and some sectors of the community services workforce (Childcare is the exception

19. Community Development • Women account for 78% of the workforce – the highest proportion of all industries, however some sectors have been very successful in attracting men, eg Ambulance sector, Health Technicians and employment services. • Good opportunities for part time work high – flexible work available with 46% of workers employed part time.

20. Community Development • Highly skilled workforce with over 75% of people holding a post school qualification (all industry average is around 42%).  Many jobs require higher education with more than 38% of workers holding a Bachelor degree or higher qualification and another 33% with a VET qualification.

21. Community Development • Generation Y is likely to find many aspects of the industries attractive. The flexibility, transportable skills that are in high demand both interstate and overseas and the opportunities to ‘make a difference’ to people’s lives, to do work that is meaningful in a community, to be challenged, are all important factors. Study and working in health or community services offers young people the chance to develop life-long human skills and knowledge (empathy, patience, life processes) and to grapple with important social and ethical issues that can enrich their capacity as community members. 

22. Community Development • Size and Scope of Industries • Health Services • raise awareness of health issues and promote health • diagnose and treat illness and injury • provide rehabilitation and palliative care. • Government and non-government organisations provide services in a range of settings including hospitals, medical centres, community health and mobile clinics. Most services are funded or provided directly by Government.

23. Community Development • Community Services • provide a large and diverse range of services designed to support individuals, families and communities • include child care, aged care, support for people with disabilities, protective services, community support, social work, and employment services.

24. Community Development • Together the industries • delivered an average of 10.1 services per person under Medicare in June 2002–03 • comprised of 79,312 beds available in the public hospital system in 2002–03 • serviced 500,000 child care places in 2002 • operated almost 3,000 residential aged care facilities • provided welfare/community services to over 2 million people in 2003/04.

25. Community Development • Both the community services and health industries have been expanding at a rate of between 2% and 3% per year for the last ten years. In 2003/04, the health industry accounted for 9.7% of total national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while welfare expenditure was 2.3%, The ageing population and the continued demand for childcare and high levels of health care have fuelled growth in the industries and will continue to do so in the near term.

26. Community Development • Talking about community development • People talk about community development in many different ways. Neighbourhood and Community Centre Coordinators have described community development as: • planning services • servicing self help groups • running support and social action groups • building community networks • participating in inter-agency meetings • undertaking needs assessment • increasing people's skills • resourcing the community to meet needs • improving quality of life • defining priorities • working towards social justice • empowering individuals and communities.

27. Community Development Skills • Facilitation • Facilitation is "making things easier". • In the context of workshops and meetings facilitation is the process a facilitator uses to help a group of people achieve their purpose. • The role • The role of the facilitator includes: • Clarifying the purpose of the meeting • Creating a safe environment

28. Community Development Skills • Ensuring people understand the process • Ensuring people participate • Ensuring participants work on their issues and their concerns • Evening power relations - ie, democratic processes • Staying on track • Staying on time • Re-conceptualising so it is possible to feed back to the group what has been said in a way that make sense of all the emerging pieces • Keeping the group working on real issues • Ensuring commitment to action (when appropriate)

29. Community Development Skills • The role is not • Role of the facilitator is not to: • Work on the agenda of an individual in a position of power to the exclusion of others’ agendas - the facilitator should be working for everyone in the group. • Generate lists that don’t go anywhere. • Let the participants stay in comfort zones to avoid real issues.

30. Community Development Skills • Characteristics of good facilitation • Good facilitation: • Is based on explicit values . • Is based on a explicit role for the facilitator. • Starts from where people are at. • Is not dominated by models & frameworks. • Enables the group to work on both emotional and rational levels. • Is true to the natural processes at work (eg, fits the timetable to the process). • is where people achieve something together and feel they have achieved something together .

31. Community Development Skills • Frameworks and language to keep in mind • In facilitating groups it is often useful to have in the back of one’s mind frameworks that might help make sense of what is happening. The frameworks should not dominate the process but may help make sense of what is happening and the issues that emerge. • Some useful frameworks in relation to groups, teams and group processes are: • Team roles • Individual preferences and differences • Group processes and dynamics • Frameworks are also needed in relation to the content of what is being worked on. For example, a planning workshop will need frameworks for thinking about planning, an evaluation workshop will need frameworks for thinking about evaluation

32. Social Capital • What is social capital? • Introduction • Over the last five to seven years social capital has started to get on the public agenda. • Many people are not familiar with the term social capital. • In everyday language we speak about the social fabric rather than social capital.

33. Social Capital • Social capital is the term being used in the public discussion because: • it puts the social fabric on a par with other forms of capital such as financial capital, physical capital and human capital - social fabric has more status as social capital in an economic rationalist world view. • social capital has some characteristics of other forms of capital, for example, it is a resource one can build up and then draw on later.

34. Social Capital Some of the reasons why social capital is being publicly discussed are: • people in the community can see economic growth and economic well-being are not necessarily building the community fabric and they are looking for alternatives to the current dominant economic ideology • there is increasing evidence social capital is an essential ingredient in: • civil societyeconomic developmentthe health of people in communitiescommunity development.

35. Social Capital • What is Social Capital? • Social capital is the raw material of civil society. It is created from the myriad of everyday interactions between people. It is not located within the individual person or within the social structure, but in the space between people. It is not the property of the organisation, the market or the state, though all can engage in its production. • Social capital is a ‘bottom-up’ phenomenon. It originates with people forming social connections and networks based on principles of trust, mutual reciprocity and norms of action. • The term social capital was first used in the 1980s by Bourdieu and Coleman.

36. Social Capital • Themes in the Literature • There is a growing literature on social capital, a number of themes are emerging: • Participation in networks. A key concept of social capital is the notion of more or less dense interlocking networks of relationships between individuals and groups. People engage with others through a variety of lateral associations. These associations must be both voluntary and equal. • Social capital cannot be generated by individuals acting on their own. It depends on a propensity for sociability, a capacity to form new associations and networks

37. Social Capital • Trust. Trust entails a willingness to take risks in a social context. We act this way based on confidence that others will respond as expected and will act in mutually supportive ways, or at least that others do not intend harm. Fukuyama defined trust as: • “ Trust is the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest and cooperative behaviour, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community. Those norms can be about deep ‘value’ questions like the nature of God or justice, but they also encompass secular norms like professional standards and codes of behaviour.” (Fukuyama, 1995: ).

38. Social Capital • Social Norms.Social norms provide a form of informal social control that remove the need for more formal, institutionalised legal sanctions. Social norms are generally unwritten but commonly understood formula. They determine what patterns of behaviour are expected in a given social context, and define what forms of behaviour are valued or socially approved. • Some people argue that where social capital is high, there is little crime, and little need for formal policing. • On the other hand, where there is a low level of trust and few social norms, people will cooperate in joint action only under formal rules and regulations These have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated and enforced, sometimes by coercive means, leading to expensive legal transaction costs

39. Social Capital • The CommonsThe combined effect of trust, networks, norms and reciprocity creates a strong community, with shared ownership over resources known as ‘the commons’. As long as community is strong, it removes the problem of the opportunist who would use the community resource without contributing to it. • The commons refers to the creation of pooled community resources, owned by no-one, used by all. The short term self interest of each, if unchecked, would render the common resource overused, and in the long term it would be destroyed. Only where there is a strong ethos of trust, mutuality and effective informal social sanctions against "free-riders" can the commons be maintained indefinitely and to the mutual advantage of all (Putnam, 1993).

40. Social Capital • ProactivityImplicit in several of the ideas above is a sense of personal and collective efficacy. The development of social capital requires the active and willing engagement of citizens within a participative community. This is quite different from the receipt of services, or even of human rights to the receipt of services, though these are unquestionably important. Social capital refers to people as creators, not as victims.

41. The End Thank-you for listening!!!!