Family and community systems are interrelated. The community provides the geographic context for the family as well as the opportunities and environmental stressors that impact family life. Individuals and families, through their actions, may also influence the larger functioning of the community.
While working with the Brickville Youth Leadership Group, you are introduced to a family. The immediate expressed need is around housing: new redevelopment is threatening to price them out of their current living situation. As you talk with them, you uncover long-term unresolved issues of grief related to past events and the changes in the Brickville community. As you work with the family, you must also attend, then, to the changes in the community and to the family’s potential to affect the systems around them. As a community-based social worker, in many ways both the family and the community are your "client."