Issues, Areas, and Fields of Community Practice

Part III of the Handbook—“Issues, Areas, and Fields of Community Practice”—provides in-depth coverage of a range of particular and important arenas of community practice. Section A begins with a central issue for America's future, “Multicultural Community Practice Strategies and Inter-group Empowerment,” by Lorraine Gutierréz, Edith Lewis, Biren (Ratnesh) Nagda, Laura Wernick, and Nancy Shore. This chapter discusses two approaches to making intergroup dialogue possible and a major part of community building. Cheryl Hyde analyzes feminist community practice and illustrates feminist approaches to all major community models. Women have always been the informal if not formal leaders in grassroots work—and had at least important if small representation early on in the movement to organize and coordinate services. If women are not at the table, they should be; the time is long past when a segment of society should consider itself competent to plan for gender or cultural groups who are not involved from the beginning. It is of major importance that feminist practice strategies be integrated within all aspects of community practice. In the chapter on faith-based community organizing, Ram Cnaan, Stephanie Brodie, and Gaynor Yancey encourage practitioners to understand the areas in which they can make common cause with neighborhood congregations for community improvement and highlight the range of community outreach and program activities carried out by religious congregations and interfaith groups. John Morrison provides a cogent discussion of current and emerging issues in service coordination that is useful for assessing needs and planning programs with community representatives and other agencies. Service coordination is a major means of responding to new social needs or intervening in recalcitrant problems with new strategies. The formation of community networks and coordinated services is becoming an increasingly important means of planning, building new programs, and promoting service integration.

Section B opens with a discussion of rural community practice, presenting characteristics of rural communities and the context for community practice. Iris Carlton-LaNey, Susan Murty, and Lynne Morris provide insightful examples of community practice in a wide range of rural communities. Increasingly, rural practitioners seek to [Page 340]connect services and encourage community development. Rural practice typically unites organizing, planning and development strategies seeking to strengthen communities and improve quality of life as rural areas face the economic challenges of the 21st century.

The health and mental health systems of the United States have been and seem to continue in a state of constant of change, if not chaos, in some areas of policy and service provision. In “Community Practice in Health and Mental Health Settings,” Anna Scheyett and Erin Drinnin explain the progression of change in both systems, and the barriers to service posed by managed care and inadequate policies. People with health/mental health problems face increasing challenges to mount successful advocacy and system change efforts to humanize the system and engage client populations more successfully in organized efforts to secure their rights.

The child mental health system has undergone extraordinary practice advances in the past fifteen years, but the current economic climate will challenge gains made. Terry Cross and Barbara Friesen analyze the advances made in cultural competence areas and the development of family-centered practice in “Community Practice in Children's Mental Health” and document areas of best practice in these central components of developing a responsive system of care.

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