What is Community Work?

Abstract

There is no agreement about what community work is. For the purposes of this book however I will define community work, at its simplest, as being the process of assisting ordinary people to improve their own communities by undertaking collective action. Providing this assistance often requires the employment of paid ‘community workers’ and it is their work which is the main focus of this book. However, these paid workers are employed in a number of different guises and may be called voluntary services officers, liaison officers, development workers, and the like, rather than community workers. They may also undertake a very wide range of functions, so that community work practice takes a great variety of forms. Here are just a few examples.