Synopses & Reviews
Combining a reexamination of theory with practical tools and approaches, Rethinking Community Practice provides a new framework for community involvement strategies. Gabriel Chanan and Colin Miller show how this innovative but still amorphous movement can become more coherent, both on the ground and in public policy, by reforming community development, building neighborhood partnerships, measuring outcomes objectively, and synthesizing the best innovations of the past three decades. This is an important new perspective for local public service agencies, practitioners working in communities, and academics and students concerned with these fields.
Synopsis
As local communities and public services reel under the impact of global economic turmoil, it is vital to find more creative ways for the services to work together with those who depend on them and who also, as citizens, ultimately govern them. Community practice is the name for that growing part of the relationship by which service providers and local residents collaborate flexibly and economically to meet needs, boost community strengths and service effectiveness, and link participative and representative democracy. Combining re-examination of theory with practical tools and approaches, Chanan and Miller provide a new framework for local involvement strategy, for policy-makers and practitioners alike. They show how this innovative but still amorphous movement can become more coherent, both on the ground and in public policy: reforming community development, building new kinds of neighbourhood partnership, measuring outcomes objectively, and combining the best innovations of the past three decades into a new synthesis. This is an important new perspective for all local public service agencies, all practitioners working in communities, and academics and students concerned with these fields.
Synopsis
Combining re-examination of theory with practical tools and approaches, Chanan and Miller provide a new framework for local involvement strategy.
About the Author
Gabriel Chanan is a researcher and strategist on community engagement and development.and#160;Colin Millerand#160;is a researcher and consultant on community empowerment.
Table of Contents
List of tables, figures and boxes
Foreword by Alan Twelvetrees
1. Introduction
2. National policy on community involvementand#8212;the historical journey
3. Community practice and the state
4. What happens in communities
5. Towards neighbourhood strategy
6. Building partnership
7. Different perspectives
8. Outcomes and evidence
9. Conclusionand#8212;strategy for community practice
References
Index