Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 2) | Page 7

Fundamentals of Social Work

Dear Social Service Practitioners,
In the course of your studies, you will hear about community engagement
and you yourself may often refer to it. It is sometimes used to refer to any
activity, action or work to reach out to another group or micro-community.
So it tends to have a meaning that is given by the user and draws context
from the issue discussed or at hand. Some may refer to it as enabling
conversation to increase participation and involvement. With the many
possible meanings out there, how exactly do we start defining community
engagement?

So what is community engagement?
Almost every modern government claims to have community engagement.
So does any national body that works with member organisations or
communities. Some from the public institutions refer to community
engagement as developing and sustaining a working relationship between
one or more public bodies and one or more community groups, to help
them to understand and act on the needs or issues that the community
experiences. The aim of doing so is to ensure that public services are of
higher quality and are more relevant to the communities they serve. So in
the planning of services, there is a process of getting greater engagement
from the communities in the development and delivery of services.
Community engagement however is not a new organising concept.
Literature, mostly in the public health arena in the past two or more decades,
have surfaced research that support the notion that the social environment
in which people live, as well as their lifestyles and behaviours, can influence
the incidence of illness within a population (IOM, 1988)1. They have also
shown that a population can achieve long-term health improvements when
people become involved in their community and work together to effect
change (Hanson, 1988-89)2. This is about community participation in health
promotion and disease prevention efforts. We see our own local examples
such as the Community for Successful Ageing at Whampoa (or ComSA@
Whampoa). ComSA i nitiated by the Tsao Foundation, aims to promote selfcare and enable community action that supports positive ageing. It also
aims to develop a comprehensive network of services to provide efficient
and effective health and psycho-social care in the community for older
1

2

Institute of Medicine. The future of public health. Washington (DC): National Academy
Press; 1988.
Hanson P. Citizen involvement in community health promotion: a role application of CDC’s
PATCH model. International Quarterly of Community Health Education 1988-89;9(3):177-186.
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