Dr. Carol Packham is the Course Leader of the BA in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the Director of the Community Audit and Evaluation Centre at MMU, and is co-ordinator of the NW Regional Take Part/Active Learning for Active Citizenship (ALAC) Network. Her work involves the encouragement of community based courses, with progression to MMU. She is an active community volunteer in her local inner city areas where she is the treasurer of a voluntary young peoples project and vice chair of a community forum. Her Doctor of Education (2006) drew on the ALAC work to explore the role for professional Youth and Community Workers in relation to volunteers.
This book explores the role of the worker in facilitating participation, learning and active engagement within communities. Focusing on recent initiatives to strengthen citizen and community engagement, it provides guidance, frameworks and activities to help in work with community members, either as different types of volunteers or as part of self-help groups. Setting community work as an educational process, the book also highlights dilemmas arising from possible interventions and gives strategies for reflective, effective practice.
