© British Association of Social Workers
Patronage and Participation, Problem and Paradox: a Case Study in Community Work
Stuart Rees obtained his professional social work training at Southampton University. He was a probation officer in Watford, Herts, for three years and has also worked in the probation service in Vancouver and Revebtoke, British Columbia. He taught undergraduate sociology in Southern Colorado State College, Pueblo, Colorado, for two years before beginning his present position as Lecturer in Social Work at Aberdeen University in 1969. He is currently engaged in research into clients' perspectives of social work services
Summary
This paper describes the emergence and development of a neighbourhood-based self-help organization. For over three years it has been staffed by self-styled community workers. For the first two years the workers were mostly ex-students who hoped that this organization could be a means of effecting radical forms of social change. They have been succeeded by local people whose main purpose is to provide a social service. This transition produced disagreement between the different community workers. But it is a trend which should confound any stereotype ideas about community workers as always out of sympathy with all aspects of the establishment.
The organization has moved from concern with one issue to providing various community services. It has passed through stages of development characterized by the liabilities of newness, by attempts to' plan and consolidate and by efforts to resist becoming an established organization. The latter stages also became liabilities of 'success'.
A central problem in this community work enterprise is the relationship between participation and patronage. This refers to the problem of how to elicit and maintain local interest and support and the paradox, that although outside help may be one way of ensuring that local groups survive, it may also limit local people's involvement and influence their goals. Dependence on patrons and a reluctance to organize local participation affected the organization's development: patrons provided various resources but were possibly a disincentive to the development of local initiatives. The nature of free participation resulted in an unintended drift towards more conventional forms of social service, albeit in an unconventional setting