The social worker is challenged to decide what specific factors have revealed a current need by analyzing everything previously learned about a community through data, interviews, research, and assessment of assets. Students within this class are nearing the end of this phase. Careful analysis with others allows a hypothesis to be created correlating cause and effect for each specific factor that has led to the current identified need, revealing strengths and weaknesses. This hypothesis should be further developed with the help of a person or group from the community who first identified the problem (Initiator). This person/group may have attempted past resolutions and are already personally invested in the identified need. This will hopefully enable the social worker through education and research to lead them to a feeling of empowerment and willingness to invest their time and resources to help develop a steering committee, which will become the change agent system. The change agent system consists of individuals who may be willing to take a leadership position to:
• personally invest in the issue
• influence people in other systems to network with the committee
• identify resources within and outside the community
• research the issue to see if it has been successfully resolved elsewhere
• draft a letter seeking permission to address the issue
Knowledge gained will lead to the development of an intervention hypothesis and outcome for each target population, client system, identified as needing help due to a stated specific problem. The client system may consist of one or more individuals, a group, agency, institution, organization, etc. The steering committee will also:
• Identify the client system and who will benefit primarily and secondarily from the intervention.
• Identify the support system(s) consisting of
Individual volunteers, local groups, county, state, or national organizations.
• Identify the controlling system who have the authority to approve intervention proposal
elected official(s), agency or corporation board, delegated official(s)
• Identify the host system who will
sponsor by providing resources/services
• Identify implementation system who will provide intervention(s)
employees/volunteer
• Identify target system(s) where changes are needed to facilitate success, which is different than population group. This system identifies how the change will be approached, who needs to agree to changes, which may be outside or within the controlling system, host system, or implementation system. Examples of these target "how" changes are:
policy, program, project, personnel, practice approach,
individual, structure, legislation, education, philosophy, value, attitude
Now, long-term commitments from individuals in the steering committee, support system, controlling system, host system, and implementation system will facilitate the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the intervention hypothesize to affect a change. During this time it is most likely that the systems will overlap. All of these individuals will be referred to as the coordinating committee who will assess and plan for:
• Readiness of target population to receive intervention
• Commitment levels of committee members to accomplish goal
• Plan responses to positive and negative responses from outside the committee
• Evaluate resources and available skills
• Evaluate proposed Intervention and expected outcome
• Facilitate implementation of intervention
• Ongoing assessment of intervention
• Develop a plan for assessing outcome and follow-up
The information within this chapter gave me a better understanding about how a hypothetical intervention plan is created, which I believe is the community intervention proposal due at the end of this semester. What conclusions and insights did you gain from this chapter? May an intervention proposal be an extension of an existing service, a change within an agency to improve a current program, or a new service that does not exist within the community?
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