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Emerging themes in community-based training.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This program was designed to prepare students to work in community-based agencies. This study included analysis of reflective journals of 12 undergraduates who completed their field placement over three semesters from spring 1999 to spring 2000.The data were sorted into learning theme categories: rapport building; understanding organizational functioning; and engagement with the community as a sociopolitical system.

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Community advocates support training programs to build specialized skills for community practice. Burhardt (1987) identified community care as unique from traditional counseling practice because community-based agencies focus on organizational functioning and engage with sociopolitical systems, like intra-group process and fundraising. Still another aspect of community practice involves advocating for social change (Davenport & Davenport, 1998; Sanfort, 2000; Zlotnic, 1998). Some of these activities include coalition building, supporting political activity, and implementing policy for social change (Picciano, 1998). Educators as well as social service professionals recognize the importance of understanding how students integrate community service with professional practice (Kahne & Westheimer, 1996; Long & Heydt, 2000; Root, 1994). Current literature on the effects of community-based learning on pre-professional trainees calls attention to the need to know the affective and social aspects of trainees' experiences from their own perspective (Bacon, 1999; Rocha, 2000). Information on the perception of similar training experiences from the perspective of social workers is omitted from this body of literature.

This article enhances the existing literature by relying on reflections to identify emergent themes that describe trainees' learning experiences. In addition, by identifying rapport-building as an emergent theme, these findings add another dimension to understanding the pre-employment training experience of social workers in community-based agencies. Findings also (a) support the themes of understanding organizational functioning and engagement with sociopolitical systems as defined in the prior literature and (b) expand the existing knowledge base by providing insight into the perceptions of these functions from the perspective of students.

Training Program

Undergraduate students interned at the Attucks Community Service Board (ACSB), the only community service agency in rural Southern Illinois providing services for and managed by African Americans. Based on the results of an annual community needs assessment ACSB assists more than 2,000 families with a variety of programs designed to address educational enrichment, substance abuse, food distribution, teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and job training. To aid the agency in achieving identified needs goals, students developed and implemented workshops for youth that provided education on HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy and substance abuse, tutored teens in pre-job skills, and provided on-going mentoring, academic tutoring and informal counseling. They also conducted a community needs assessment, wrote grants, and attended local community network meetings. Agency meetings addressed staff related issues such as scheduling, staff conflicts, event planning, and matters related to ACSB financing....

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