6 - Working with communities

Summary

Introduction

Community matters because:

• • It makes people feel connected;

• • It helps people avoid loneliness or social isolation;

• • It provides people with recognition and identity;

• • It contributes to a sense of place and belonging;

• • It provides a frame within which to understand individuals;

• • The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This list is only a beginning, derived from our focus group for this chapter, and you may be able to think of many more reasons why community matters. There is, however, a new mantra in town (Tam, 2021). Global pandemics and economic crises, and Brexit in the UK, have resulted in a siren call for communities to be more resilient. Given that the causes of shock and strain are global, this is a big expectation to place on geographical communities, which are often small and local. There has been much talk during and post the COVID-19 pandemic about the return to normal, but also a feeling that we cannot go on like this with a galloping climate crisis, widening inequality, worldwide threat to human rights (Chanan, 2021) and, we would add, global insecurity between nations. The ability of communities to respond is unlikely to be achieved through occasional short-term projects, we suggest; rather, there is a need for strategic public investment in community development and this is something for which we should be advocating. There is a requirement for a national strategy on community involvement to revive and improve community development (Chanan, 2021). In summary, community development, often thought of as a local activity, has a new strategic dimension which may be implemented at local, national and international levels, and community workers can and should operate at these levels. Wyler (2021), in discussing the report A Better Way (2019), indicates the ways in which both top-down and bottom-up work and support communities so that:

• • Everyone is heard and believed in, given a fair opportunity to thrive and has the ability to influence the things that matter to them;

• • Every community comes together, looks out for each other, respects difference and enables everyone to belong;

• • Society as a whole values and invests in everyone and in every community. (Wyler, 2021, 103)