SOCIAL WORKER IN N.Z. CITY

Press, 16 June 1979, Page 17

SOCIAL WORKER IN N.Z. CITY

Planning For Community: The Mythology of Community Development and Social Planning. By lan Shirley. Dunmore Press, 1979, 174 pp. (Reviewed by Geoffrey Rice) It is a pity this book has such a forbidding main title and a rather offputting sub-title, for these may turn away potential readers who would find a great deal of interesting, if not absorbing reading, between its covers. lan Shirley was Community Adviser to the Auckland City Council from 1973 to 1977, and is lecturing in sociology at Massey University. His purpose in writing this book is to review four years of social work in Auckland, and to see how the realities compare with international theories of community planning. In his own words, it reflects a social work practitioner's search for a development model within the New Zealand context. Most general readers will probably want to skip Section One, which reviews the theoretical literature, in order to get on with the author’s account of coping with disadvantaged families in East Auckland, but the author plainly intends the book to be read as a whole. Just to make sure, there is no index, but instead a rather impassioned protest against disconnected “snapshots” of a developmental process. Fair enough, but the lack of an index is a serious limitation on usefulness and the copious documentation does not make up for its absence. The author is severely critical of planning imposed from above, or

outside any community. He is committed to" development from below, and argues forcefully that planning should be done with, rather than for. particular social groups. His chief target of attack is the “architectural determinism” of the fifties and early sixties, which saw the solution to urban ills in new housing, mixed neighbourhoods, and grand new shopping centres. In Britain this approach has resulted in the transformation of horizontal slums into vertical slums, by the wholesale removal of low-income families from decaying Victorian terrace houses to new council tower blocks. In New Zealand, the author points to the clearance of Freemans Bay as a parallel case: most of these low-income families finished up, via transit camps, in the State housing areas of Auckland, which rapidly developed all the familiar social problems which new housing was supposed to cure. This was to be the scene of the author’s main work as a community adviser, crowning 10 years’ previous social work experience. The core of the book is a fascinating account of his work in Glen Innes, coping with such families as the Kendricks and the Tamaheres (fictional names), the latter at one time comprising 27 adults and children in a two-bedroom State house. The author shows great sensitivity and compassion for the problems of Maori youth in the big city, often made to feel that they have no place in either Maori or pakeha society. But

the central problem he identifies is simply that of poverty, of families whose income cannot meet their needs. He is especially critical of the comfortable middle-class assumption that poverty is solely due to financial mismanagement. His experience of helping such families shows this to be a myth. They cannot budget their way out of deprivation. The account is calm and objective, in spite of the author’s earlier worries about detachment. He also shows a fine sense of history, often rare tn a sociologist, and stresses the need for a community to have a clear view of its own local history, not least an accurate record of its dealings with the . council and Government departments. The writing is clear and readable, with only a few lapses into sociologese (here is an ugly new v e rb to be avoided; “consciensizing”). Do people really “move into the occupational sector”? Surely they just get a job? And does anyone “move into redundancy”? It is scarcely a matter of choice, but is rather thrust upon one, unwanted. But these are minor quibbles. This is an unusual combination of personal practical experience in social work with a clear summary of the theoretical literature on community planning. It would be a mistake to dismiss it as one man blowing his own trumpet. For anyone interested in contemporary New Zealand social problems, it is a must, and may well prove to be a landmark in its field.