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4/6/10 general practices.

PROFESSOR: I want you to exchange names for your area and write down all
the people in your group.
I posted this before class the planned change process this is what you are going
to be doing. This is in your book begins in the back of chapter 1. This is the first part
starting about preparation.
In prepare one of the first things you will do when you get to your community
meeting you will identify problems. You will listen to the issues they bring up and then
identify what the problems are.
You are going to review your macro and personal reality. What you want to
figure out how realistic is the problem you have selected? Is it in the realm of possibility
that you can do something? You can address this in the next 6 weeks? That doesn't
mean you solve the problem but I expect you to come up with some kind of plan.
Establish your primary goals. Looking at the problem and the reality and looking
at time to pull out of there and get some goals for what you want to accomplish.
It's important that you go as a team that way you can all come to an agreement
and a consensus about what you want to target.
When you are at the meeting you want to identify the relevant people of
influence. Who is bringing up the issue? Who is being passionate about this issue?
You want to talk to that person explain what your class project is and see what kind of
ideas they have.
As you go on with the process you may be able to see other people in the community of
influence it's not always the head of council sometimes it's the residents living in the
community.
Assess potential financial costs and benefits to clients and agencies. Cost is
going to be a concern. I got petitions signed to get street lights put on our street now
they did go ahead and do that but they could have said there is no money for this. So
then I would have had to go back to the reality. And for a budget you could come up
with a financial plan of what it might cost the community.
You want to review professional and personal risk. If you are working in a large
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organization and you identified the problem, reviewed your reality, it's doable, you have
established goals of what needs changed and contacted others with the same ideas,
you know what the cost is and then you review is this worth my while? Especially when
working in your own organization or community what is the risk involved personally or
professionally is it worth the fight?
Evaluate the potential success of a macro change process. How can you go
about doing that? Look it up where they have done something similar. Hence doing
the annotated bibliographies. Usually you can find something when you do research. If
you have had other classes and it can be of use to you then use that information. At
this point in your education you should be using that information and be a critical
thinker.
The imagine model you start with an innovative idea based on what you learned
in the prepare process. So you have a problem you are going to address using critical
thinking skills thinking out of the box. Maybe use some of the research we have done
and what is the best way to address this problem. And come up with an idea.
Next you need to muster support and who do you get support from? Council
members, community. Anyone who has shown interest in that problem or issue.
You need to identify assets that can be financial but it can be people. Who is
going to be there with you to stand by you to be an asset of working on that particular
problem? If you can get someone in that community meeting to participate in your
project that's going to be great because they are going to feel like they are helping and
you will feel like you get more out of it. Maybe your plan could really be used in the
community. That the community that you are going to address will want to use your
idea.
Specify goals, objectives and action steps. We talked about establishing goals
here we are going to specify them and add objectives and action steps in order to make
it work.
Implement the plan. You are going to do it if you can. If you do have an
opportunity try to implement it.
Neutralize opponents. Get rid of the haters. You don't want them to try to
oppose everything you try to do. There is always going to be nay sayers when you ask
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them what is the better idea if they don't have a solution then you may have neutralize
them, if they do have a solution then you try to integrate it.
And you want to weigh your progress. You aren't waiting until the end but you
are doing a little evaluation when you start and what do we need to change it to make it
better. In increments you do evaluation. Because we only have a few
weeks to get this done you may not get to this final step. If you don't what steps would
you take to evaluate the plan you came up with?
For your papers this is the format you will use you will talk about your i, m, a, g, i,
n, e. They aren't that long. And then you have a discussion bring in your research and
see how it's worked in other places. And you do that as your summary or conclusion at
the end.
To refresh you about how social work began it really did begin just a few people
coming together to make changes in a community. There were 3 major economic and
social changes in the U.S. industrial. What was going on during that time? A lot of
people were leaving rural areas coming to urban areas to work and mass production,
factories, and war was going on and that brought a lot of women into the work force
during that time.
Urbanization. Again that is when people were coming from rural areas to cities
to find jobs. And people may not have been caring for their children appropriately.
Then there was homelessness. And how it started there were concerns in the
community and a few people stepped forward and tried to make a change. There is
sections in your book giving a history I suggest you review that.
This week is chapter 3 and 4. Last quarter we talked more about groups and we
talked about Bruce Tuckman. Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. He
came up with theory of how groups perform as you are working as a group you may go
through some of these stages.
The first one is forming getting together. Storming this is the conflict stage. It's a
stage where leadership is formed. Norming is when things settle down you come to
formalization of the group. People are getting along better discussing. Performing
where you are actually doing things you are doing the task of whatever the group is.
Adjourning is when you come to the end.
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Keep those things in mind as you are working in your team and as you go to the
counsel meeting.
Other thing you want to look for is leadership. What does the leadership in that
community look like? What specific goals and visions do they have? And if you look on
the web site they might have the mission statement. Personally as a leader you should
have specific goals and vision of things you want to do. How are you going to persuade
others to go with you if you don't know where you are going.
A list of leadership skills. Working in a community organization working toward a
plan can change so you have to look at what are the targets for change.
What is a change agent? The person who brings about change.
What is an action system? That is the target system. Know what it is you want
to change.
You have to have the capacity to inspire. Who inspired you to come to school or
do things in your life you made a decision to do? What kind of skills do you have that
inspire people? It's more about what we do rather than what we say and we don't know
that we have inspired someone.
Assertiveness. We took that test. You know what your assertiveness level is.
Things you need to tweak to become more assertive.
Communication skills. What are some of the communication skills that you need
in interactions? You need to be clear and concise, attentive skills, want for everyone to
be heard, listening.
Lead by example. Do the right thing, modelling. Bring new
perspectives think out of the box. Use of self. Bring your own experiences into those
ideas. Understand the media. I think in this whole controversy with the media
with this healthcare issue have you seen these media ads? You want to use media to
your advantage.
Task group leadership skills. What does that mean when working in a team?
Let everyone take on a task in the group and let them take on the leadership of that
task.
At the end of your project you will do a peer review and you will grade your
peers. And people get frustrated when people don't pull their weight. It's that everyone
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takes on a task and takes leadership for that. It's important that whatever task you have
taken then you take on that responsibility and you own it.
Manage conflict and conflict can be resolved by communication. By listening
and talking and using your communication skills.
When you get to your community meetings it's important to start networking.
What are networks? Connections. And there can be various types of networks. Why
are they important? Gives you more exposure. It's often about who you know.
There are formal networks and informal networks informal would be friends and
families and formal would be organizations and communities. And you might be able to
meet people in this project that may be able to help you down the road.
Outreach is when you move outside of your immediate community. Even when
doing networking or brokering for your clients if there are some services they need you
call around and start gaining people's names and what organizations they are with and
what they do and what services they provide and you keep information about it and
that's how you begin. That's how you build your outreach.
There can be cross cultural networks and formal and casual.
Some of the problems you can find in networks this would be around working
with large organizations. Also when working with individuals be careful not to devalue
informal networks. If their network is their drug addict cousin and that person helps
them out when they can then you can't devalue that.
Workers take leadership of a client's informal network.
Another problem with network is withholding information. Some people want to
be a gatekeepers and hold that information.
Some agencies don't want to collaborate they want to hold onto the resources
they have.
Question confidentiality. Sometimes that can be a problem people will say I can't
talk about that or I can't give you information about that. Sometimes you need to give
some information in order to get what you need to get. How do you circumvent this?
Get a release of information from the client is how you take care of that. Make sure you
have release from the client to discuss their situation.
And overcoming problems. You need to acknowledge interest and resources
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and bridge communication gaps. Sometimes it's just over a miss communication.
This is from a leadership program I put together a while ago. I think it's important
information to remember. This is not in the book but it will be on the test. I think it's
basic principles that everyone should abide by when you are addressing an issue.
Focus on the situation or the issue or the behavior not the person.
Maintain the self-confidence and self-esteem of others. When you can give
positive feed back to people that can be empowering. Even if they are doing something
incorrectly you can correct them but it's the way that you do it. You always start with
something positive you want to talk about positive behavior or how they handled a
situation and then you give critical feed back I think you can improve if you try this or do
this.
Maintain constructive relationships. We were talking about networking if you
maintain constructive relationships in all aspects of your life you can call on someone
when you need them.
Take the initiative to make things better. This applies to our imagine project.
Lead by example. Positive example.
There's are a list of different roles you will have when you are trying to network.
Know your location, know the area you are focussing on. That is why with this project I
want you to be in an area you live.
Know what funds are available or where you can get funding. Get information
about that. We have such an advantage now with the technology we have.
Get training in areas that you want to involve yourself more in.
When you do referrals that is a part you will play as a worker you refer people to
other places for resources.
Publicity will be important to you. To get out information about different things. If
you are holding an event for your organization then you know how to get that
information out.
Accept referrals. Sometimes people will ask you to help them.
Credibility. Know your stuff be credible about what you do.
Sometimes you will act as a buffer but mostly you act as someone who is
supportive and who will consult.
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Because you will be working in and with your team these are important things to
know. Rely on your group collaboration for goal achievement. If you know you aren't
pulling your weight how do you think your other members are feeling about that? It
takes the equilibrium out of the group. It's important that everyone take time to pull your
weight. If you get stuck on something go back to your group and ask for help.
Remember you have common goals in this.
These are team characteristics you can find this in your book.
If you are on the end of planning and conducting meetings and you will be doing
this with your group. Plan ahead. Clarify purpose. You know who is in your
group. You will select a time and place.
When you get back together you are going to take on that leadership role so
maybe it's better if you set an agenda if not the meeting it goes all over the place. It
helps your group stay on task.
When you hold a meeting start them on time. When you are punctual it let's
people know you are serious and a lot of teams people get to meetings early so start on
time and state the ending time at the start. Be sure you stick to your time everyone has
other things to do. Let people know how much of your time they can have. If you are
participating in a group and there is tasks you have to let your group know I can
dedicate 3 hours a week to this, or one hour a week, or whatever. In the end they are
going to be grading you.
Keep the group on target. You do that by maintaining that agenda. And end the
meeting on time and plan for follow up meetings.
I will try to give you half an hour to 45 minutes per class to work on this.
Most organizations run on Robert's rules of order and this was in the book from
last quarter. Make sure you know this you may hear some terms used in the meetings
that you may not know. There are motions and parliamentary rules and procedures that
are used so you want to review that.
Do a case scenario in a group of 4.
CHAPTER 4.
Remember even if I don't cover information in class it's your responsibility to read
your book.
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What is an organization? There are all types of organizations. There are

institutional, personal and private, social, goal directed, linked to external environment.
What types of organizations can you think of? Girl scouts, black cowboys, University of
Cincinnati, NOW.
What are social services? They have various institutions associated with them.
Seven hills neighborhood house, life span. The book has it broken down between
social services and social agencies. Social services have public and private services
they are not run by the government but can have some government funding. Agencies
are government run. They administer some benefit sometimes financial assistance,
healthcare, education. It can span between both services and agencies. United way
would be social services. And they do integrate themselves it's not distinct.
What are some organizational theories? It's a way to conceptualize and
understand how an organization work. There is something called
organizational culture it's how they act and work together. Most of the time it's top
down. Theory x is that people will only do minimal work and they are only there for the
paycheck.
Theories about when the worker is allowed to be part of their job and help in the
work being done.
The book goes into details about the different types of theories.
Neoclassical organization theory people are willing to cooperate but only at the
minimal level.
The human relations theory is more psycho social type theories they looked
more at moral and productivity and take into consideration peoples feelings about their
jobs.
Scientific management theories.
Administrative theories you are given a rule that you have to follow and not
always asked how that affects the job you actually do.
Feminist theories they involve liberation of women to be able to do more things in
life based on gender and for women's self-determination. There are different types of
feminine theories and I want you to go back to figure 4.1 and look at look at the different
feminist theories.
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I want to break I want you to get with your group and discuss how do get together and
what date you are going to go to your meeting and start on your project.