Embedded Governance: A Study Of Social Work Participation In Urban Older Community Services

With the changes in urban society,China’s urban management system has changed from a unitary system and a neighbourhood system to a community system,and the community has become an important field and basic unit of social governance.Due to the changing social environment and the increasing material and cultural needs of community residents,it is difficult to meet the demands of residents by government power alone.This paper takes a typical case of social work techniques embedded in the governance of an old urban community as the object of study.Drawing on existing experiences,it explores the practical process of social work involvement in the service of old urban communities under embedded governance,and accumulates experiences for the governance of old urban communities.Based on the perspective of embedding theory,this study uses a case study approach to explore the practical process of social work participation in urban old community services under embedded governance and its realisation mechanism,using social work participation in urban old community services as the research content.The study finds that,based on the background of the institutional environment at the national,local and community levels,the embedding of social work in the governance of old urban communities has become a reality.At the early stage of embedding,social workers integrate their identities and position their roles under the service embedding orientation,and promote relationship building and demand research under the relationship embedding orientation.In the process of embedding,there are five practical actions: structural embedding,resource embedding,participatory embedding,cultural embedding and functional embedding.The community changes after social work is embedded,showing the effect of refinement of service governance,publicness and diversity.Although embedded governance has achieved certain results,it also shows the challenges of conflicting professional service values and administrative performance logic,conflicting professional governance and movement-based governance,conflicting egalitarian contracts and unequal relationships,conflicting resource dependency and organizational autonomy,and insufficient subjectivity and selective participation dilemmas.To address the problems faced in the embedded governance of old urban communities,it is suggested that the Party should play a role in leading grassroots community governance,build a development path for the integration of professional social work and government administrative work,improve innovative community governance methods and mechanisms,strengthen the training of social work professionals and organizational capacity,and stimulate the participation of community residents.