“Doing the Community”：Social Workers’ Community Empowerment and Reflection

• Main Author: HSIUNG, WEI-CHIH
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: 亞洲大學 2016
• Subjects: community empowerment; community partnerships; community social workers; community strengths perspective

This study attempts to explore social workers’ interaction strategy during their community empowering process as well as find out their own positive community interaction experiences. Social workers accumulate their experiences through community empowerment. The concept of partnerships between social workers and communities helps social workers connect various resources to response the community needs. There are three research purposes for this study: 1. Investigating how community social workers build community partnerships; 2. Describing the development of social workers’ value beliefs; 3. Understanding the operation strategy as the community social workers face the community issues. Empathy and support are simple concepts, which can truly implement the operation aspect and help community find out the value as time passes by. The core concept of community empowerment is using strengths perspective to develop community capacities. Social workers lead community residents to see their own strengths and potential with community work skills in each key points. In the meantime, social workers assist them to transform suitable ways of working for each individual community. Community social workers need to play an accompany role during empowerment to go together through the painstaking process of community building. Therefore, the community really needs support and encouragement from social workers who imbed the social work values. Finally, both communities and social workers share the beautiful results after great efforts.