Community social work practice has made tremendous progress in reaching out to marginalized groups in urban and rural areas of the country, with social work scholars bringing many of the key concepts underlying community practice into fields like health promotion, fostering approaches ranging from involving beauticians in providing domestic violence services, to developing community gardens to address food security and educational initiatives. The role and importance of assessment in development of health and social services are well accepted in the field and represent the fundamental building ... More

Community social work practice has made tremendous progress in reaching out to marginalized groups in urban and rural areas of the country, with social work scholars bringing many of the key concepts underlying community practice into fields like health promotion, fostering approaches ranging from involving beauticians in providing domestic violence services, to developing community gardens to address food security and educational initiatives. The role and importance of assessment in development of health and social services are well accepted in the field and represent the fundamental building blocks for the creation of any form of social intervention. Needs assessments are, without question, the most common form of assessment in these fields. They typically, however, result in a rather narrow view of a community that stresses disease risk profiles and lists of various social problem categories. Nevertheless, unlike needs assessments, asset assessments bring a range of factors and considerations to the creation of an intervention that are guided by participatory democratic principles and processes. Although needs assessments can also be guided by participatory principles, they generally are professionally-driven and do not stress capacity enhancement in the process. The emphasis on participatory democracy during asset assessments distances them from their needs counterpart through the use of values, the language used to communicate, and how research methods get conceptualized and carried out. Community asset assessments can be viewed as a goal, a strategy, a set of guiding principles, a method, and a process. These different perspectives make a consensus definition of a capital difficult to arrive at in both scholarly and practice realms. Consequently, it is best to view asset assessments from an evolutionary point of view in order to appreciate the variety of perspectives, tensions, and potential for achieving positive social change. In essence, these assessments are both an instrument of discovery as well as an intervention to achieve community change.