Community Based Program Design

Community Based Program Design is a social program design method that enables social service providers, organizers, designers and evaluators to serve specific communities in their own environment. This program design approach depends on the participatory approach of community development often associated with community based social work, and is often employed by community organizations. From this approach, program designers assess the needs and resources existing within a community, and, involving community stakeholders in the process, attempt to create a sustainable and equitable solution to address the community's needs. Similar to traditional program design, community-based program design often utilizes a range of tools and models which are meant to enhance the efficacy and outcomes of the program’s design. The difference between traditional design and community-based design, when using these tools, are the dynamics in the relationship between the designers, it's participants, and the community as a whole.
History
Community practice in social work is linked with the historical roots of the in the United States. More specifically, the history of community-based social work has evolved from the Charity Organization Society (COS), and the settlement house movements. However, during the earlier half of the 20th century, much of this work focused on institutionalization. Not until the 1960s did the shift from institutions to communities exacerbate the emphasis on community-based program design. This is known as the era of deinstitutionalization.
Community-based organizations and community-based programs burgeoned during the period of deinstitutionalization. The poor conditions of mental health institutions and an increasing amount of research that illustrated the benefits of maintaining the relationships of the individuals served within the community surfaced to further the growth of community-based programs. (for more, see: deinstitutionalization)
Although social work has been historically defined by these institutionalized and deinstitutionalized periods, informal community design programs have always been around. In fact, informal community-based programs predate human service applications of this approach.
Formally, community-based program development has been professionalized by such disciplines as urban studies and planning and social work.
Advantages and Challenges
Advantages
Benefits of community-based program design include gaining insight into the social context of an issue or problem, mutual learning experiences between consumer and provider, broadening understanding of professional roles and responsibilities within the community, interaction with professionals from other disciplines, and opportunities for community-based participatory research projects.
Increased sustainability is an advantage of community-based program design. The program sustainability is ensured by the identification of solutions to problems based on existing resources accessible to all community members. Also, the involvement of local community leaders and local volunteers reinforce the sustainability of the impact of the program. Other advantages of community-based program design are:
* Collaborative participation
* Enriching diversity
* Serves clients in their community
* Address/meets needs of community
Challenges
Some challenges of community-based program design is the limited availability of resources, propensity for high levels of staff turnover, the reliance upon unpaid volunteers, participant retention, and the evaluation of a dynamic task environment. For the same reasons that sustainability is an advantage of this approach, utilizing limited available resources is a challenge. Based on free market principals and resource scarcity, programs often operate below pareto efficiency. Limited resources result in high levels of staff turnover and the reliance upon unpaid volunteers. Also associated with low availability of limited resources is low levels of participant retention.
Program design tools
Socio-Ecological Model
One such model is the Socio-Ecological Model. The socio-ecological model provides a framework for community-based programs, and emphasizes the influence that multiple levels of society have on each other (see the figure on the right). The underlying purpose of constructing a logic model is to assess the "if-then" (causal) relationships between the elements of a program. Community-based program designers can employ logic models to ensure that program inputs (available community resources) will support the activities of the community-based program, and that the outputs (resulting from the activities) will lead to the program's desired outcomes.
Social action model
For community-based programs that seek to address macro-issues, the social action model may be utilized. The objectives of the social action model are to: 1) recognize the change around us in order to preserve or improve standards; 2) understand the social action process/model is a conceptualization of how directed change takes place; and 3) understand how the social action model can be implemented as a successful community problem solving tool.
Evaluation
An emerging and growing practice of program design is program evaluation. Evaluation involves the ongoing systematic assessment of Community-based programs. Program designers often choose to incorporate evaluation into design in order to check program processes, determine impact, build a base of support, and/or justify replication/expansion.

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