Community Development and Child Welfare

1. Community Development and Child Welfare An Integrated Perspective on Social Work Practice CSWE Conference Portland, Oregon, October 14, 2010

2. Three-phased workshop

3. What is community development? • It involves people who live and work in a place in planning and carrying out projects that make their community stronger. • These people • Study the community’s assets and problems • Make goals for building up the assets and solving the problems • Choose action steps to achieve the goals • Carry out the action steps • Evaluate and learn from their actions

4. Beginning elements • ABCD as a critique of human services and outlook emphasizing gifts and assets of individuals and community groups • FBCD as a critique of forces that diminish productive and creative family roles and an outlook that emphasizes creative and productive family roles • Risk-focused prevention (Communities that Care) • Improving family capacity to manage assets and generate income seen as essential for creating safe environments for children and for furthering child development • UN Rights of the Child as a comprehensive foundation

5. ABCD Map of Community Needs Unemployment Housing Projects Crime Child Abuse Gang Members Teen Mothers Illiteracy Poverty School Dropouts Mentally Ill Homeless Truancy Labeled People Uninsured Delinquency Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993. Building Communities from the Inside Out, Chicago, IL: Acta Publications

6. ABCD Perspective • Every person has gifts • Real community is built on relationships • Professionals must “step back” • Leaders involve others as active members of the community • Begin with what people care about • Find the motivations to act • Start small with those who respond to initial “call” • Hold listening conversations • A citizen centered organization is the key to community engagement • Institutions tend to crowd out citizens and informal associations • Institutions have reached their limits in problem-solving • Institutions must assume the posture of servanthood

7. Assumptions of Family-Based CD • Strong families essential to accomplishment of CD goals • Family viability requires some control of productive and creative assets • Families exist in many forms • Some families require help with roles, relationships, communication, and internal functioning • Families co-create or co-produce solutions to problems with agencies, schools, local government, businesses, and other families • Sustainable development principles aid in resource conservation, renewal, productive uses of habitat, self-sufficiency, and entrepreneurship

8. Goals of Family-Based CD • To build thick, productive roles for mothers, fathers, and other family members • To create diverse, productive, sustainable family institutions • To establish communication networks among families, as well as among families and community institutions • To build host settings for families into community institutions • To engage families, other community members, and community institutions in place-based planning • To craft public policies that support and protect productive family roles and capacities in community development Kordesh, 2006. Restoring Power to Parents and Places, New York, NY: iUniverse

9. What are productive family habitats? • Housing, structures linked to housing, land used by families for business, agricultural, and educational purposes. • Further family self-sufficiency • Link work and family life • Two dimensions of being productive: • What the people do • What the plants, buildings, and technology do to produce and conserve energy, resources

16. Community development works best when … • Family enterprises are strengthened • Families are empowered to care for themselves and their neighbors • Families work together to grow food or bring water or other resources to the community • Families pass down their traditions and beliefs to their children

17. Steps in Family-Based Community Development

18. Identify and describe the families • How many families • How many with children • Married, divorced, or unmarried • Ages of heads of household • How many with single and dual parents • Presence of elders • How many persons per family household • Types of employment

19. Identify Family Skills & Knowledge • Teaching skills • Building skills • Problem solving skills • Skills in caring for others • Skills in growing food • Skills in making things • Selling skills • Bargaining skills

20. Identify what families care about • Ask people in their roles as mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons, daughters • Hold learning conversations • Find out what they care about as family members • With respect to own families • With respect to community • Consider a circle of family leadership

21. Write down the productive assets of families in their own habitats • Coffee ceremony table • Chairs, benches, and tables • Other furniture • Carts • Cars or taxis • Houses • Tools • Donkeys • Land • Cooking utensils • Computers • Telephones

22. Identify steps to strengthen families as producers • Training and support for micro-businesses • Obtain or improve space for production • Provide opportunities to acquire tools, carts, or other productive assets • Advocate for good quality and stable housing • Provide opportunities for shared productive spaces and other assets • Provide literacy and skills training to families

23. Analyze the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities facing families as producers in the community

24. SWOT Analysis & Productive Family Tasks

25. Identify steps to strengthen families as producers • Training and support for micro-businesses • Obtain or improve space for production • Provide opportunities to acquire tools, carts, or other productive assets • Advocate for good quality and stable housing • Provide opportunities for shared productive spaces and other assets • Provide literacy and skills training to families

26. Define strategies to help families organize as producers • Incubators for family enterprises • Food production associations involving urban gardens • Family resource centers in or linked to schools • Family producer cooperatives • Family safety or protection networks

27. Planning similar to ABCD Family resource center Spaces for co-production Parents as leaders, including board members Families as planners and designers Built out of inclusive, learning conversations

28. Other “goods” families must help to co-produce • Education • Children’s health • Child development • Food • Income • Civic habits

29. When families are too weak to be producers, there is an empty space in the community. They can’t be replaced by associations or networks or NGOs.

30. Risk factor Protective factor Vulnerable person or group Buffers and protective factors can be created through formal programs or informal practices Risk factor Protective factor Risk factor CD as risk-focused prevention builds positive influences on child and youth development

31. Risk Factors • Exposure increases likelihood of harmful behaviors • Unhealthy or harmful behaviors by children • Unhealthy or harmful behaviors by adults • Risk factors exist at different levels of person’s environment • Individual • Peers • Family • Community

32. Example of risk-focused framework Researcher s have found in the US that children ages 10-18 are more likely to engage in problem behaviors if they are exposed to certain risk factors at the levels of individual, school, family, and community. In other countries, the risk factors that make children vulnerable to abuse or exploitation would differ in certain ways, and might be similar in some ways as well. Communities that Care approach created by J David Hawkins and Richard F. Catalano, Jr., now a programs of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

33. The Social Development Strategy The social development strategy is designed to organize communities around efforts to create diverse and mutually reinforcing activities – informal and formal efforts – to ultimately encourage healthy behavior by children and youth. It can also be applied to a community when the desired results are child protection and child resilience. The abuse or exploitation of children would be seen as emerging from risk factors at the individual, family, and community levels. Communities that Care approach created by J David Hawkins and Richard F. Catalano, Jr., now a programs of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

34. Linking ABCD with risk-focused prevention Assets and gifts as protective factors Building assets builds protective factors when … They strengthen positive social bonds They teach skills to aid in mutual support They enable assets to be used productively They further economic self-sufficiency They give positive meaning to everyday productive activities • Positive relationships • Social skills • Household assets and tools • Economic skills • Cultural traditions that provide positive meaning and hope

35. Integration of content fields

36. It flows from the assessment phase • Family assessments • Roles and relationships, communication patterns, power dynamics • Assets – financial, habitat, tools, skills, knowledge • Community assessments • Roles and relationships, communication patterns, networks, leadership and power dynamics, risk factors • Assets – financial, habitat, tools, micro-institutions, skills, knowledge, buffers against risk factors • Policy assessment • Relevant systems • Funding streams

37. From the assessment flow … • Goals for sustainability, roles and relationship building, asset building, network building, enterprise formation, and others • Strategies at the family (social dynamics), asset, habitat, co-production, planning, and policy levels • Operational steps • Evaluation and feedback

39. Resources on-line • ABCD • Family-Based CD • Risk-Focused Prevention • Integrated Community Development-Child Welfare Project

40. Contact Richard Kordesh:rskordesh@bluehouseinstitute.org

41. Putting It All Together Child Welfare Community Development (CW-CD) By James L. Scherrer, PhD, LCSW Adapted from Henderson, P. (1997). Community development and children: A contemporary agenda. In C. Cannan & C. Warren (Eds.). Social action with children and families: A community development approach to child and family welfare. New York: Routledge, pages 23-42.

42. Asset Based Community Development Formulation of goals and strategies to make a neighborhood, village or other small place a good setting for parents to raise children Involves people who live and work in a place in planning and implementing projects that make the community stronger

43. Asset-Based Community Development These people: Study a community's assets and challenges Set goals for increasing the assets and managing the challenges Choose action steps to achieve the goals Implement the action steps Evaluate and adjust based on the evaluation

44. Family-Based Community Development A “family” is: A group of people who are socially and economically interdependent AND Which exercises social control over its members AND Is involved in raising children

45. Family-Based Community Development Engages families who live in the community To increase their productive capacity To become co-builders of their communities To develop co-producer relationships with Schools Local Government Businesses Non-Profit Organizations NGOs

46. Child Welfare Community Development Communities are comprised of people who share a similar Identity Problem Interest These people may, or may not, live in close proximity to each other

47. Child Welfare Community Development Families in the community have assets that can be developed and used to address threats to the Safety Health Well-being of children that exist in their Environment Neighborhood Living spaces

48. Child Welfare Community Development Integrates “working with children” with Economic programs Regeneration programs Supports and strengthens communities Brings people together Develops a sense of community identity Articulates resources and needs Creates interconnected relationships

49. Child Welfare Community Development Creates accessibility Small scale is essential Safe and developmentally appropriate lines of communication between children and adults Children are involved in community activities and projects Children participate in decision-making Clear, jargon-free language used

50. Child Welfare Community Development Integrates the social and economic Community-based crime and drug prevention programs Resources for children's play areas Children and adults actively involved in their Design Location Management