Your Community Context Of Practice

As a human services leader, it is critical to understand the context of your practice. While your daily work may focus on activities within your organization, the organization is designed to serve a community. While communities can take many different forms, for this assignment, you are to focus on a geographic service area as your community—either at the city or county level. Once you identify and define the geographic service area, you need to describe your community—its characteristics, resources, needs, demographics, and history. To structure your narrative, you will need to highlight the significant events and trends that impact Talcott Parsons’ societal institutions: government, economy, religion, education, and family, as well as a newer institution of media. To complete this assignment, you will need to use reputable sources, such as government sites, agency sites, local news, and museums.

As you are pulling your ideas together, consider these questions about your community:

• Who lives there? How has the population changed over time?
• What are the resources for the area?
• What are the significant historical events that impacted the community?
• What are its pressing issues?