Community Care and Participatory Research

The Governor General's Award jury
"An outstanding accurate translation that altogether faithfully presents the content of the original. The translator's lucid style renders the work accessible not only to specialists but to the interested general reader."

The Governor General's Award jury
The translator’s lucid style renders the work accessible not only to specialists but to the interested general reader.

Book Description
A new perspective on the role of social work professionals and government institutions in the '90s, the pieces presented here examine the possible collaborative roles available to social work professionals who wish to promote personal autonomy and community self-reliance. As the 1990s begin, we see massive cuts in funding to social services and a concurrent re-emergence of a self-sufficiency that sees individuals within communities, motivated by their personal desires for autonomy, joining forces and effecting change from within. No longer is the state and its institutions automatically called upon to intervene and deal with social problems. In this new climate of change, it is imperative for social work professionals to re-examine and redefine their roles. The action or participatory research paradigm offered in this volume offers them new tools to help individuals and communities help themselves. With the exception of Jean Panet-Raymond’s Community Action, published in translation, very little of Québec social work theory has found its way to English audiences. But the Québec experience contributes an important new perspective to the work being done in North America.

From the Back Cover
As the 1990s begin, we see massive cuts in funding to social services and a concurrent re-emergence of a self-sufficiency that sees individuals within communities, motivated by their personal desires for autonomy, joining forces and effecting change from within. No longer is the state and its institutions automatically called upon to intervene and deal with social problems. In this new climate of change, it is imperative for social work professionals to re-examine and redefine their roles. The action or participatory research paradigm offered in this volume offers them new tools to help individuals and communities help themselves.

About the Author
Jacques Alary is well known in the social work and mental health fields. He was the founding editor of the social work journal Intervention, and is a member of the editorial board for Mental Health in Canada. His previous book credits include the French translation of Ray Thomlison’s Perspectives on Industrial Social Work (1984). He has taught at the University of Montreal School of Social Work since 1963, and from 1969 to 1987 was its director. He also served on the National Council of Welfare and as the President of Family Services Canada. Alary has been involved with community action research in developing countries, working with CIDA in Columbia. Along with Jacques Beausoleil and Claude Larivière, he founded the Organization for Action-Research on Support Networks and Institutional Practices (GRARSPI), whose aim was to use action-research training methods as an instrument for community empowerment. Members of GRARSPI include university researchers, and health and social service workers operating in the areas of work force reintegration and alternative and grassroots mental health. GRARSPI’s work led to the ideas expressed in Community Care & Participatory Research. Translator Susan Usher lives and works in Montreal. She was a nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Translation for Community Care and Participatory Research, her translation of Solidarités.

Excerpted from Community Care and Participatory Research by Jacques Alary. Copyright © 1990. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
We are witnessing, as one of the paradoxes of our time, the concurrent emergence of a new emphasis on individualistic values and the formation of new, forceful solidarities. But the contradiction between the pursuit of individuality and the rebirth of solidarity is more apparent than real. While individualism is often denounced as self-serving, it merits a closer look, as behind such conduct often lies a quest for authenticity, for identity. And as each of us becomes more aware of our own aspirations, values, talents and limitations--in short, our distinctiveness--do we not become more sensitive to those of others? And is it not in this recognition of individual differences as well as common desires that true solidarity takes root? We are surrounded by countless self-help groups and community-based activities through which people seek self-actualization while working to improve the common living conditions of the collective. This dual phenomenon is in essence one and the same undertaking, through which people try to escape from the systems they have invented for themselves and in which they now find themselves imprisoned.


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