Community Immersion

I. Introduction

Understanding communities is important to social workers because things that we focus on changing on a day to day basis changes the community in some way, shape, form or fashion. Social is based on dedication to the community as a whole whether locally, statewide, state to state, internationally or universally. I read something important about communities in Netting, it stated that “Communities are the arena in which macro practice takes place, but they are so diverse that no one definition or theory seems able to capture their total essence.” With that being said, here are a few definitions that I found during my research from asking a friend, family members, a dictionaries, the University of Kansas school website, and a random freelancer. In summary, my friend and family members said that a community is “”. Based on Merriam- Webster, “A Community is “an interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location; a group of people who have the same interests, religion, race, etc.; a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests.” (Merriam-Webster). KU Community Tool Box (2013) defines a community as:
While we traditionally think of a community as the people in a given geographical location, the word can really refer to any group sharing something in common. This may refer to smaller geographic areas -- a neighborhood, a housing project or development, a rural area -- or to a number of other possible communities within a larger, geographically-defined community. These are often defined by race or ethnicity, professional or economic ties, religion, culture, or shared background or interest. ()
The last definition that I want to express is fro...

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...f the state Representative Matt Gaetz, Sylvania Heights residents and Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley. The neighborhood was labeled as a “disaster zone” by one the residents and that it has an outrageous local drug and prostitution problem. They expressed concerns as the community gang population is growing. Sheriff Ashley wants to make a change but it’s hard the entire community doesn’t want to cooperate. He said “I’m at a point where I don’t know what the community wants me to do. I’ll arrest them all, then I’m a profiler.” (Newspaper)Then the focus turns on how to get the criminals off the streets and keep them off the streets with an important fact that it’s nearly impossible to find a job with a prison record. “They suggested creating tax breaks for businesses that hire former inmates as well as programs to teach them interview and job skills.” (Newspaper)