The application of a model of systematic planned practice to participatory community work

The paper describes the application of Rosen's model of systematic planned practice to a participatory community work program in a deprived neighborhood in southern Israel. The model requires practitioners to make explicit the connections between the problems to be tackled, the outcomes pursued, and the interventions chosen, and enables continuous real-time monitoring at each stage of the process to ascertain whether or not the interventions were carried out and the desired outcomes attained. The application of the model is illustrated in two parts of the program: a project involving excursions for pre-school children and the promotion of resident involvement in the neighborhood. In both cases, working in accord with the model helped community workers focus and direct the planning of the interventions to attain the desired outcomes, while the ongoing monitoring made it possible for them to detect problems as they arose and to deal with them before they caused irreparable or difficult to remedy damage.