Urban renewal has been the dominant approach to revitalizing industrialized communities that fall into decline. A national, community-based organization, the Skillman Foundation sought to engage in a joint effort with the University of Michigan's School of Social Work to bring six neighborhoods in one such declining urban center, Detroit, back to positions of strength and national leadership. A Twenty-First Century Approach to Community Change introduces readers to the basis for the Foundation's solicitation of social work expertise and the social context within which the work of technical assistance began. Building on research, the authors introduce the theory and practice knowledge of earlier scholars, including the conduct of needs assessments at multiple levels, engagement of community members in identifying problem-solving strategies, assistance in developing community goals, and implementation of social work field instruction opportunities. Lessons learned and challenges are described as they played out in the process of creating partnerships for the Foundation with community leaders, engaging and maintaining youth involvement, managing roles and relationships with multiple partners recruited by the Foundation for their specialized expertise, and ultimately conducting the work of technical assistance within a context of increasing influence of the city's surrounding systems (political, economic, educational, and social). Readers will especially note the role of technical assistance in an evolving theory of change.
The book discusses a university partner-the UM School of Social Work Technical Assistance Center (SSW-TAC)-with an embedded foundation driven initiative for neighborhood change to improve outcomes of youth before, during, and after the massive economic and demographic transformation of Detroit between 2006-2015.
[The book] is an extraordinary work that breaks new ground in how academics and their foundation partners need to approach urban community development projects if lasting change is to occur. What makes this work stand out is an unstated yet consistently woven theme . . . the theories of change you emphasize must also include yourselves as open to transformation as well as the targeted communities . . . As the reader will find, systematic inquiry, data collection, historical understanding, and technical assistance matter, too - as long as they remain framed within this belief that working with the community changes us as much as them. Given the political and economic contours of the twenty-first century landscape so far, such lessons perhaps have never been more timely and important."
