What's in a title: Understanding meanings in community care

Introduction

The unit you are about to study is exciting and stimulating. Working with adults in the community is changing at a pace that can sometimes feel bewildering. Practitioners are being asked to review what they are doing in a critical way and to adopt new approaches. For example, the word ‘community’ is one that we all use quite readily and is at the heart of many social work policies. However, we tend to take it for granted that everyone means the same thing when they talk about a community or the community, and we seldom have time to analyse what we mean and compare this with other people's views. Understanding more about key concepts like ‘community’ and ‘care’ will help you to appreciate why policies such as the introduction of ‘community care’ have raised such complex and controversial issues, and why different individuals can experience them in such different ways.

This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Care, welfare and community (K222) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this subject area [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .