Developmental Evaluation for Community Centered Practice,
Version B

This Developmental Evaluation format is a tool for the staff and boards of agencies who are working on community-centered approaches to their mission. The purpose is twofold. First, to help agencies place themselves on a continuum from conventional social service delivery to full focus on community building, on a number of different levels of practice. Second, to offer guidance about possible next steps for organizations that want to progress further toward community-centeredness. The matrix below also serves to translate the meaning of community-centered practice into specific organizational and staff actions.

Community-centered practice is defined as efforts to strengthen social organization among a group of people who interact regularly and share institutions of social life. Strengthened social organization is, in turn, a means to enhance the ability of neighbors to engage in collective problem solving, to improve self-sufficiency and internal control, and to make the neighborhood a desirable place to live. Such changes benefit individual and family functioning.

Levels of practice are presented in descending order of generality, from organizational vision and mission down to individual casework. Each level is framed as a question addressable by checking the box that most closely approximates the posture of the organization or program. Options within each level are arrayed as a set of progressive steps leading from straightforward service delivery to full focus on community building.

Organizational Vision: Does the organization envision and act to expand its role beyond "delivering services" in the community?

• Providing services to individuals and families is an appropriate and sufficient response to individual, family, and community problems.
• We strive to make services to individuals and families more accessible through outreach efforts.
• To be more effective, we believe services must be offered in new settings and through flexible approaches.
• Services must be accompanied by community organizing to create lasting change for individuals and families.
• Strategies to enhance and build on the capacities of residents are a major part of our work, and have replaced most traditional services.
• We have a written policy to regularly review each area of programming to ensure that it contributes to strengthening social organization.
• Building community in partnership with residents is the focus of all of our work.

Mission and Goals: Do the organization’s mission and goals embody the concept of community centered practice?

• Our mission and goals describe our purpose in terms of the delivery of treatment services to patients or clients.
• Our mission and goals explicitly encompass non-clinical as well as clinical services.
• Our mission and goals explicitly include reference to community as within our scope.
• Our mission and goals explicitly cite community development as well as treatment of problems as organizational strategies.
• Our mission and goals emphasize the development of community and neighborhood.
• Our mission and goals are framed entirely in terms of development of community.

Organizational Knowledge: Do the organization’s staff and board express an understanding of the concept of community centered practice?

• Staff has not been introduced to the concept of community-centered practice.
• Some staff understand that there is a significant difference between delivering services and building community.
• Staff can cite an example of a community-centered program.
• Staff and some board members can define service delivery and community-centered practice as contrasting paradigms.
• Staff and board create new ideas for building community.
• The organization and its board help to define community building through their contributions to theory and practice.

Community Posture: Is the organization engaged with the neighborhood or community in which it acts?

• We base the services we offer on the availability of funding.
• We undertake periodic needs assessments in the communities we serve to determine what programs to offer.
• We regularly involve community residents in assessing needs and planning services.
• We inventory neighborhood resources as a basis for strategic planning and program planning.
• We regularly involve community residents in inventorying resources and in planning initiatives.
• Community residents have a determining voice in the nature of our activities that affect them.
• We devote ourselves to identified neighborhoods or communities in their efforts to create quality of life.

Nomenclature:

• We refer to those we treat as patients.
• We refer to those we serve as clients.
• We refer to those we serve as our customers or consumers of our services.
• We refer to those we work with as participants in our programs.
• We refer to neighborhood or community residents as partners or collaborators.

Programming: Does the organization integrate community-centered practice into all of its activities and programs?

• All our programs are remedial services delivered by professionals in office settings.
• Community-based services are separately located, use staff with distinct qualifications, and employ methods different from the balance of office-based services delivered.
• Our programming is a mix of traditional services and community-centered programs.
• We critically review programs asking how they might become more oriented to community building.
• Building social capital or resident capacity is the expressed goal of many program efforts.
• All programs, including counseling and mental health services, are strengths-based and explicitly focused on building individual, family, and community capacity.

Role of Neighborhood Resources: Does the organization act to enhance neighborhood resources?

• We refer clients to other appropriate professional services that we cannot provide in-house.
• We educate clients about existing agency and institutional resources in their environment.
• We regularly inventory both formal and informal community resources to enhance our clients’ ability to access them.
• We assess the effectiveness of various community resources and actively promote contact of our consumers with the most helpful ones.
• We create community resources which residents want or need.
• In partnership with residents, we assess the balance and effectiveness of resources in the neighborhood and together build a strong mix.

Individual Social Assets: Does the organization seek to increase the number and helpfulness of its consumers’ assets?

• We help clients overcome mental health issues that impair or impede good relationships.
• We offer one or more support groups to people with specific, identified issues.
• We help people inventory their social networks and facilitate applying existing relationships in the solution of issues or needs.
• We actively create opportunities for residents to connect with new resources.
• We link people who have similar or complementary strengths.
• We create and promote new linkages between residents (supportive social capital), and between residents and external resources (bridging social capital).
• We train residents to assess their social assets and to create and organize new levels of linkages in their own neighborhoods.

Individual Capacities: Does the organization seek to increase the number, breadth and utility of its consumers’ capacities?