THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANSCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK COURSE TITLE: Community Development Spring/Summer 2004 Location: Mondays, 1pm – 5pm INSTRUCTOR: Pamela Martin Turner, J.D., M.P.A. Office Hours: By Appointment COURSE NUMBER: 660 CREDIT HOURS: 3 PREREQUISITES: LOCATION: 3816 SSWB 1. Course Description Social work programs are focused packages of service delivery whose successful management requires social workers to develop competence to conceive, plan, design, implement, manage, assess and change them. Of that array of skills, project planning and development is crucial. Social work services (and all other services, for that matter) are “delivered” through “projects.” A project is an interrelated package of events and activities which has a beginning (initiation) and end (termination), and a goal or goal set (“adoption”, weight loss, getting an MSW, etc.). A process is the interrelationship of events and activities over time, including their sequence. Project managers need to consider intra, inter, and extra – project elements that impact the successful development and deliver y of project goals in a timely fashion (i.e., on time). Processes exits in systems (supersystems) and have smaller systems within them (subsystems). As systems, process involve flow, (ex) change, and transformation. Events are nodes where (ex) change takes place (an interview, for example, or a class meeting. Activities involve the flow between (ex) changes; transformation is the result of the entire process. Specific skills will be considered, including personal management skills assessment, effective project meeting skills, program design skills (e.g., via flowcharting, Gantt and PERT charts and quality management tools). Technical elements of program design are augmented with complementary models and skills, especially those dealing with managing for results vis-à-vis a time deadline, meeting clients’ legitimate requirements, and adapting to changing environments. The relationship of a particular program to other aspects of the agency’s functioning is also considered (e.g., staff and community participation and decision-making, funding, legitimacy and support). Skills in initiating and managing change are also considered. 2. Course Content This course focuses on developing an understanding of skills needed to conceive, plan, design, implement, manage, assess, and change service programs and projects. The course concentrates on single service programs and projects as planned systems of action; its perspective spans the range from that of the program staff member through that of the program director and policy manager.2The course prepares students to undertake activities common to all phases of program development, and to assume independent responsibility for performing tasks associated with at least some of these activities (e.g., documenting program plans, developing initial budgets, program process analysis, and scheduling change). Design, implementation and management processes are conceived as requiring both rational-technical methods and social and political strategies, and the synergy between them is discussed. Specific attention is given to issues in program design and development for disadvantaged or other special populations, and to gender-related elements in program design and service delivery. The course specifically focuses on management skills needed to plan and implement intra-organizational change in four major areas: (1) agency services, (2) agency technologies, (3) agency structures and systems, and (4) agency staff and other human resources. Barriers to change are surveyed, and approaches and techniques for overcoming resistance are reviewed. Current frameworks for institutionalizing change are discussed, such as total quality management and continuous quality improvements as applied to human services agencies. The interplay of organizational change with the development of agency’s leadership, structure, vision, mission, and organizational culture are considered. 3. Course Objectives Upon completion of the course, students will be able to demonstrate beginning competence in the following phases of managing, projects/program (analysis & design, implementation, and monitoring) and organizational change. (A) Intra-Organizational Change Approaches: Students will apply coherent frameworks to analyze, plan, implement, monitor, and initially evaluate incremental and radical change within a human service organization program, including: • Analyze typical barriers to change and demonstrate techniques that can be used to overcome such resistance; • Describe a sequence of elements typically required for a successful change effort, and necessary subroutines, (e.g., plan-do-check-act). • Describe, execute, and present simple, empirical, visual representations of current conditions in the organization (e.g., scatter diagrams, Ishikawa, “cause-and-effect” charts, Pareto charts), new visions of change (e.g., flowcharting, force field analysis), the monitoring of change (e.g., control charts), and the evaluation of change (e.g., customer satisfaction surveys). (B) Project/Program Analysis & Design: • Describe and analyze the organizational and market environment within which proposed programs would operate using logic models; • State and analyze component parts of a program as a system; • Present a program in terms of its goals, objectives, activities, tasks, and expected outputs and outcomes; • Employ various assessment tools for understanding program components and procedures (including but not limited to flowcharting and ecological mapping); • Describe the job tasks of staff members and allocate their time in terms of program and function.3 C. Project/Program Implementation: • List the major steps involved in designing and implementing a program change; • Compare the change process as a rational problem-solving activity and as a socio-political process; • Design a schedule of activities necessary for the implementation of a new program or program change. D. Project/Program Monitoring and Evaluation: • Identify monitoring procedures appropriate to particular types of program technologies and phases of program processes; - Specify approaches to assure required levels of quality assurance - Propose improved procedures and ways that can be adapted for direct use