Community Development Journal 36:18-29 (2001)
© 2001 Community Development Journal and Oxford University Press
Article |
Community development practice surviving new right government: a British and Victorian comparison
Social Work Unit, Victoria University of Technology, PO Box 14428, Melbourne City, MC 8001, Australia, E-mail: Lesley.Hoatson@vu.ed.au
For most of the nineties, the Australian state of Victoria was led by a new right government and community development (CD) practice had difficulty surviving. Community workers wondered whether Britain's CD experience had anything to teach those struggling 'downunder'. This paper is based on British and Victorian research undertaken in 1998. Data was gathered through individual and group interviews with fifty five English and Scottish and forty Victorian practitioners. While new right policies were implemented in different periods in both places, there are common themes around how people involved with CD practice handled new right agendas. Three phases of reaction: a retreat/isolation phase, one of adaptation and defence and one of rebuilding can be identified. These phases are linked to how community development practice has operated within different paradigms. It builds on work that this author and her colleagues Jane Dixon and Dick Sloman undertook in 1996 in summarising the key elements of Welfare and Contract State paradigms, which while originating from Victorian material, have many similarities with British experiences. It goes on to include how Blair's 'Third Way' relates to these thus providing Victorians with some prediction about the context in which community development work may progress if Victoria borrows yet again from British ideas.