Practice Bold as Love: ‘Professing’ Community Work

Community work is a values driven occupation committed to social transformation, human rights, equality, anti-discrimination, social and environmental justice through the processes of collective empowerment, and participation (Ledwith 2005; AIEB 2016). The story of community work in Ireland sees a shift from a once relatively independent practice towards a situation where it is increasingly becoming part of the State’s apparatus of service delivery (Harvey 2012, 2015). These two stories are at odds with each other. I was curious to find out if this situation was impacting on community workers’ ‘professing’, that is their way of being in and seeing the world. Story is an essential aspect of community work (Ledwith 2005; Born 2014; Kelly and Westoby 2018). I chose narrative inquiry as a way of researching community workers stories. Narrative inquiry accepts that the world is storied and that through collecting and analysing stories it is possible to gain an understanding of how another ‘professes’ their world to be (Andrews, et al., 2013; Clandinin 2013). I gathered the stories of six leading community workers and from these I fashioned a collective narrative of ‘professing’. This illustrates community workers’ ‘profession’ as an intermeshing of three commitments to, social justice, community, and reflexive practice