Community Psychology for
Applied Psychologists:
Working Alongside
Marginalised/Excluded/Disadvantaged
Communities
Facilitators: Dr Ho Law and Dr Glenn Williams
With input from Community Psychology Section Committee members

• Speaker and delegate introductions
• Sessions:
1. Introduction to Community Psychology
2. Ecology, Prevention and Promotion
3. Community Psychology - Research and Action
4. Community and Organizational Change
5. Applying these Principles and Practices in your Work

PhD CPsychol CSci FCMI MSCP(Accred) AFBPsS FRSM
• Founding Committee Member of Community Psychology Section (Honorary Treasurer) http://cps.bps.org.uk/
• Registered Psychologist, Chartered Psychologist, Chartered Scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, an international practitioner in coaching psychology and psychotherapy.
• Chair (2010) of the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Special Group in Coaching Psychology. http://www.sgcp.org.uk/
• Chair (2013-14) BPS Psychotherapy Section http://ps.bps.org.uk
Email: drholaw@gmail.com
• President, Empsy® Network. http://www.empsy-network.co.uk/
Or: law2@uel.ac.uk
• Founder Director, International Society for Coaching Psychology http://www.isfcp.net/
• Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader in Coaching Psychology, University of East London (UEL), UK. http://www.uel.ac.uk/psychology/staff/hochunglaw/
• Visiting professor, Lisbon University, Portugal.
• Visiting psychologist, School of Nursing, Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital (HKSH).
• Current research: Compassion in healthcare practice.
• Achievement awards: Local Promoters for Cultural Diversity Project (2003), the Positive Image (2004),
• the first Student Led Teaching Award (UEL 2013) - Best Supervisor. http://youtu.be/MDVVbdhSEuw

• Received PhD in Psychology in
2003 – Studied organisational change, personality, well-being and stress.
• Has worked in the NHS as a researcher from 1995 to 2001.
• Heavily involved with
Community Psychology research and practice developments in the UK and abroad
• Has delivered Psychology teaching since 2001 to nursing/other health professionals and to psychology students
• Author of 90+ books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, and commissioned reports.
– Committee member of the BPS’
Community Psychology Section since 2010.
– Member of the Society for
Community Research and Action.
– Member of the European
Community Psychology
Association.
– External Examiner for BA (Hons.)
Counselling and Psychology in
Community Settings (Leeds Met
University Regional Network).
4

•Delegates divide into groups of 4 or 5.
•Introduce briefly to each other their name and what they do.
•Discuss amongst yourself and agree on one example of the work from the group as the most representative application of psychology in communities.

participants are requested to:
1. Understand the question.
2. Use your group’s chosen examples to illustrate the understanding of the questions in the later exercises.
3. Ensure understanding of the others’ viewpoints during the discussion.
4. Use common sense everyday experience.
5. Use imagination to step into the examples under debate.
6. Refrain from book citing.
7. A volunteer to take note to summarise the key points and report back to the plenary…

Community Psychology for
Applied Psychologists:
Session 1:
Introducing Community Psychology with
Dr Glenn Williams and Dr Ho Law

Introduction to Community Psychology
- Overview
• What is community psychology?
• Origins of community psychology
• Core values of community psychology
• What do community psychologists do?

• Its primary focus is on understanding, and working with, people in their wider social context beyond seeing them purely as individuals
• Acknowledges role of systems that exist around people relating to place, history, and culture that affect people’s well-being and behaviour
• It uses a multi-layered focus (Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010) with analysis of:
–micro-systems (e.g. a family or social network),
–meso-systems (i.e. links between micro-systems such as between home and school or relationships between work and home) and
–macro-systems (e.g. social norms, economic systems and policies).

Origins of Community Psychology (CP) in UK #1
• Relatively new as an organised discipline in
UK Psychology
One of the forerunners was from Europe:
• Marie Jahoda and colleagues studied an unemployed community, Marienthal, Austria in
1930s. Their conclusion = negative impacts best understood at the community, rather than the individual, level (Jahoda,1983)
• Jahoda was responsible for an important pioneering psychological study of a community in Wales.
• Jahoda became 1 st woman professor at Sussex
University and founded a version of Social
Psychology closely related to community psychology.

Origins of Community Psychology (CP) in UK #2
• Fast forward a few decades… Roots of CP was in applied social psychology, mental health work, and clinical psychology.
• Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology launched in
1991 and co-edited by Orford.
• Textbook on Community Psychology produced in 1992.
• CP conferences held in the UK from the 1990s onwards.
• Strong tradition of critical psychology influencing CP. E.g. Prof. Ian
Parker and Erica Burman.
• MMU integrates critical psychology and CP together as part of their undergraduate programmes.
• Growing links between health psychology and CP – Michael Murray,
David Marks and Carla Willig.
• For a fuller overview, see: http://tinyurl.com/eop6x

Some Key People in UK Community Psychology
• Prof. Jim Orford
• Prof. Carolyn
Kagan
• Prof. Jacqueline
Akhurst

• To get a better understanding of the multiple factors (e.g. social, economic, political and environmental) that cause or
perpetuate psychological problems in order for preventative strategies to be developed and put in place;
• To develop partnerships, where local knowledge of participants is valued as equal to expert knowledge, and professional skills are used collaboratively;
• To collect evidence of the impact of community-based interventions;
• To undertake forms of inclusive, participatory action
research (and other more progressive research forms);
• To engage, and influence, policy makers.
• For progress on this, see http://cps.bps.org.uk

•Placing people in their social contexts
•Includes central concepts of:
–Power (Disempowerment………..Empowerment)
–Social inclusion (Marginalisation…..Inclusivity)
•Involves working collaboratively with others
•Uses a plurality of research & development
methods (e.g. participatory action research)
•More critical community psychological approaches challenge the status quo

http://www.isfcp.net/ethics.htm
1. Rights
2. Respect
3. Recognition
4. Relationship
5. Representation
6. Responsibility

• They see social exclusion, marginalisation, powerlessness and oppression as having major impacts on health and well-being.
Lack of power and oppression due to inequalities (e.g. rooted in social class, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity) states of learned helplessness, conformity, self-blame and worthlessness downward spirals in well-being and ill-health (Prilleltensky, 2003).
• Community psychology research and interventions attempt to change these influences and systems.
• Community psychologists pursue social justice, liberation, and act as advocates for the marginalised and the oppressed.
• Examples of research = debt (Akhurst, 2011), gambling (e.g.
Orford, 2010), climate change (e.g. Burton, 2009) disabilities (e.g.
Kagan, et al., 1999) and physical and mental health (e.g. Lovell, et al., 2011).

• What is community?
• What does community mean to you?
• Are you part of a community? If so, which ones?
• Are the communities that you belong to tied into a place/an ethnic group/a religion or something else?
• What made you part of that community? Did you get much of a choice?

Community Psychology for
Applied Psychologists:
Session 2:
Ecology, Prevention and Promotion with
Dr Glenn Williams and Dr Ho Law

• The Ecological Metaphor
• Prevention – primary, secondary and tertiary approaches
• Promoting healthy lifestyles and choices
• Working together on a prevention/promotion project relevant to your work practice or research interests

• Interdependence (e.g. micro-, meso-, macro-levels)
• Cycling of Resources (e.g. having sustainable social support systems – both formally and informally)
• Adaptation (e.g. coping with changes to the eco-system such as cuts to funding of essential services)
• Succession (e.g. having a long-term perspective – evolutions to available social systems and networks of support)
Nelson & Prilleltensky (2010)

• Primary – aims to reduce incidence of new cases of a disorder
(i.e. the number of new cases in a specified population at a given time)
• Secondary – aims to detect disorder and to give treatment at early stage. Ideally, the goal will be to reduce the prevalence of a disorder (i.e. number of active cases at a particular point in time)
• Tertiary – aims to reduce the chances of disorder developing into disability/handicap
From Orford (1992)

Increasing levels of focus
Bloom (1968),
Heller (1984)
Public Healthrelated (e.g.
Robertson, 1986)
Ecology
(Bronfenbrenner,
1979)
1. Communitywide (focused on whole community)
2. Milestone
(those passing a developmental milestone
1. Host (e.g. person infected)
2. Agent (e.g.
‘vehicle’ for transmitting disorder/disease)
3. High-risk 3. Environment
(e.g. noxious circumstances)
1. Micro-level (e.g. family, workplace, school)
2. Meso-level (e.g. interfaces between home and school, between home and work)
3. Macro-level (e.g. societal norms, legislation)
Continued from Orford (1992)

Primary Secondary
• Promotes healthy lifestyles • Requires early diagnosis and treatment
• Does not need a condition to be diagnosed or understood to have an intervention for it (e.g.
John Snow’s work on cholera prevention in London in 1854)
• Based on an outcomes model – treats the person, not the disease
• Interventions typically involve behavioural (e.g. exercise, diet) or policy changes (e.g. sanitation, pollution control)
• Relatively mechanistic and based on biomedical model
• Fits the linear model that underpins conventional health care systems
• Some interventions based on this approach may repair one part of the body but might still upset rest of the system
From Kaplan (2000)

Focus
Secondary
Prevention
Mammography
Women aged 40-
49
Reference/s
Eddy, 1989;
Salzmann et al.
1997
Compared with Cost/QALY
No mammography
Ranges from
$150,000 to
$240,000
PSA screening for men 60-70 yrs
Krahn et al.,
1994
No screening Screening causes reductions
Primary prevention
Daytime use of running lights in automobiles
Tobacco restrictions for minors
Williams &
Lancaster, 1995
Graham et al.,
1998
No use of lights < $0
No restrictions < $1,000
Continued from Kaplan (2000)

Promotion and Communicating the Message:
Lessons from Research
• Messages should not be laden with statistics - be colourful and memorable
• The communicator needs to be expert, trustworthy and likeable
• Strong arguments to be put at
beginning or end of communication
• The message should have a clearly defined course of action
• For messages emphasising uptake of screening, suggestions of problems arising from no screening will be effective
• Audience receptivity to changing habits:
– Audience receptive - state only good points of message.
– Audience undecided - discuss both sides
From Daniel O’Keefe (2002)

• To whom is the message being promoted?
• Is this an effort at primary, secondary or tertiary prevention?
• What other elements of prevention are being tackled? Any of the following:
–Community-wide
–Milestone-based areas of focus (e.g. passing a life milestone)
–High-risk (e.g. those particularly at high risk)
–Micro-level (e.g. in a family or workplace)
–Meso-level (e.g. interactions between home and school micro-systems, or between home and work)
–Macro-level (e.g. prevailing attitudes and norms, current laws or policies)

•What risks to health and well-being can you identify for a target group relevant to your group’s practice or research interests?
•What prevention strategies could you use to target these risks?
•What promotion methods might work well for your target group, and why?

Community Psychology for
Applied Psychologists:
Session 3:
Community Psychology Research and Action with
Dr Ho Law and Dr Glenn Williams

• 3 main paradigms in community psychology research:
–Post-positivist
–Constructivist
–Transformative
• Examples of community psychology research
• Designing research and action for your chosen target group – group activity

• Outlined in Williams & Zlotowitz (2013):
• Positivist/Post-Positivist – came from logical positivism with its emphasis on one external reality/truth
• Constructivist – sees reality as being relatively shaped by people’s perceptions of their worlds and that there can be many ‘truths’ (e.g. see post-modernist approaches to inquiry)
• Transformative – developed from Marxist and critical theorist approaches to social phenomena; emphasis is on external reality that has been historically shaped by social, cultural, political, gendered, economic and ethno-racial factors. Based on assumption of inequalities being present and there being dominant/subordinate groups

Focus of research
Analytic
Activist/
Interventionist
Post-Positivist Constructivist Transformative
Mainly quant.
Methods
(surveys, epidemiological data, quasiexperiments, case-control, cohort studies)
Focuses on programme evaluations, costeffectiveness, outcomes
Mainly qual. methods
(grounded theory, discourse analysis, case studies)
Also analyses programme data, archival information, minutes of meetings, observations, publicity material
Quant./Qual.
methods used.
Highly
participatory.
Partners with those in a disempowered and marginalised community
Defines problems and intervenes in partnership with the disadvantaged community

• Ontology: Rooted in German critical theory, feminism, Marxism and strives for social justice and change. Proposes an external reality (like post-positivism). Unlike p-p, this reality is based on shared social
histories where inequalities and misuse of power are salient.
• Epistemology: Inter-relationships between researcher and researched.
The researcher is working in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalised. Important to acknowledge and reflect on this dynamic.
• Axiology: Has a moral and political stance underpinning the research.
Has values of justice, respect for diversity, inclusivity, empowerment, and accountability to those being oppressed (6Rs).
• Methodology: Reflexive and critical. Uses participatory and actionoriented methods. Disadvantaged people are included in the setting for the research agenda and in the executing of the study and the dissemination of findings and deciding what to do afterwards.

• Dr Ho Law & Naomi Mwasambili
• With input from: Valeria Sterzi & Jenny Gordon

1. UEL Make It Global (MIG) project which aims to support
250 women-led, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in
London, to increase their confidence and awareness of the benefits to internationalise.
2. The scheme aims to:
– 1) increase peer coaching resources in Southwark;
– 2) get customer feedback; and
– 3) enable peer coaches to successfully carry out placements within their community.
3. The research aims to assess the effectiveness of a six-week community based peer coaching training scheme provided by
Community Therapies and Training Service (CTTS) using narrative method.
4. The approach aims to help participants to improve their personal development, self-reflection and general functioning.

C
MIG
W
T
W
CTTS
W

Instructions for observer/listener – outsider witness

• Identify:
1.
The problem
2.
The goal, hopes and dreams
3.
How will your intervention help…

Community Psychology for
Applied Psychologists:
Session 4:
Developing Effective Organisational and
Community Change with
Dr Ho Law and Dr Glenn Williams

• Resistance to change
• Using Appreciative Inquiry to effect change
• Steps for organisational/community change
• Considering strategies for organisational change in your groups by using your same target group from Sessions 2 & 3

• Foucault (1976) “where there is power, there is resistance” (p.95).
• The oppressed may be fighting for their rights through resistance.
• We need to distinguish between (a) the disempowered having their resources taken away through the change versus (b) the powerful having the status quo (and their status) being placed under threat through this change.
• “Those with a vested interest in the status quo often mount an attack on the ‘methodology’ [of a change or evaluation] because they do not like the ‘challenging’ work that the group is doing. It is often easier to attack the method than to attack the sense making that the [collaborative] inquiry is doing” (Burns, 2007; as cited by
Kagan, et al., 2011).

Advocating for the leisure participation of people with learning difficulties:
“One of the local service managers was hostile to the project, arguing that slow, person-centred ways of working would lead to little change and be a waste of public money. We invited him to join the management group of the project.
Although his criticisms were still voiced, he could not stop his
staff cooperating with a project of which he was part. He was also exposed to some of the exciting changes that were achieved.
Within 3 years he had ‘mainstreamed’ many of the ideas [of the project] and they became part of the service…Far from continuing to resist, he ended up embracing the practices and had also brought a
different set of skills and knowledge to the project” (Kagan et al.,
2011; p.289)

• It is effective when owned by those affected by the change.
• Change doesn’t always happen straight away in the area where the intervention is focused.
• Work done by community psychologists to effect change is only one element of what is going on in an organisation at any one time. Many social
patterns occurring at the same time in the same environment.
• People affected by the change may not have the perspective at the time to be able to give effective feedback on the impact of the change.
• Community psychologists have a privileged position of being on the ‘fringes’ and occasionally on the ‘inside’ in helping to bring about the change. There is a tension, however…Stakeholders may be suspicious about whose interests are really being represented in helping to effect and evaluate the changes.

• Based on Appreciative Inquiry (AI)
(Cooperrider & Srivasta, 1987)
• 3-phase appreciative interview:
1.
Get a narrative from the person on when s/he was at his or her best
2.
What were the conditions that brought out the best in that person?
3.
Look at the emotions experienced when reaching end of narrative
• “To what degree do your plans for the immediate future take you closer to, or further away from, the conditions that allowed you to be at your best?”

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a Way Forward for
Organisations
(Robbins, 2003)
Most Organisation Development approaches are problemcentred. Identifies a problem and aims to come up with solution. AI identifies unique qualities and strengths of an organisation to build on to improve performance.
• Four-step AI process (large group meeting usually over 2-3 day period):
1. Discovery (what people think are the strengths of the organisation)
2. Dreaming (info from Discovery is used to envisage possible futures for the organisation)
3. Design (based on the articulation of the Dreaming stage, participants find a common vision for what the organisation will look like)
4. Destiny (discussion on how the organisation will fulfil this dream).

Preparation Action
Maintenance
Contemplation
Precontemplation

Steps for Organisational Change #1
(adapted from Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010)
Steps
1. Pre-cont.
2. Contemp.
3. Prep.
Aim
Create awareness
Create need for change
Specific goals and areas to be changed
People
Allies to the change
Allies and possible allies
Those with influence and credibility
Tasks
Inform others
Look for specific problems and spread information
Get data about problem and devise plan
Who will do it?
Choose effective people
Credible people in organisation
Internal or external consultants
When to do it?
Decide on right time to sensitise
Have time to create momentum for change
Have clear timetable for prep. phase

Steps Aim People Tasks Who will do it?
When to do it?
Action Do the most effective interventions first
Everyone affected by the proposed change
Many tasks linked to the changes
Involve multiple agents of change
Maint.
Put in place systems to sustain the change
Everyone affected by the change
Have activities to institutionalise the change
As many people as possible
Decide ahead of time on this. Too much time lag will reduce credibility of change
Have changesustaining activities at regular intervals

• Effecting Change by Using your Group’s Scenarios
• Have a think about your target group that you focused on in
Sessions 2 and 3.
• Think about macro-, meso- and micro-level focused interventions that you could recommend.
• Now, aim to see if you can draw from the content of today’s session to bring about successful change.
• Who would you get involved in the change? How would you get the key stakeholders involved?

Community Psychology for
Applied Psychologists:
Session 5:
Incorporating Community Psychology Principles and Evaluative Practices in your Work with
Dr Ho Law and Dr Glenn Williams

• A case study of evaluation within a social enterprise and wider communities
• Evaluation at meso/macro level using multi-level modelling
• Considering strategies for evaluation in your groups by using your same target group from Session 4.

Process Evaluation
Input Process Output
Outcome
Evaluation methodology (Law, 2013)

Responsive Evaluation – qualitative method
Robert Stake (1975)
• Assumptions and the process:
1. Focus on issues that are important to
stakeholders (not objectives or hypotheses).
2. Use the identified issues to drive the
information (data) gathering process.
3. Regard human observers as the best instruments for the data collection.
4. Obtain information from diverse (different, independent and credible) sources.
(Green & Abma, 2001)

Responsive Evaluation – qualitative method
• Social Constructionism, - multiple realities constructed by social interactions
• context-bonded
(Green & Abma, 2001)
• Pragmatic method – let the design emerge from the ongoing process. Thus suitable for evaluating communitybased interventions e.g. using AI or action research…
• may be embedded in other research methods such as ethnography or even quantitative method (as mixed design) for triangulation.
• Users are free to decide whether the results are transferable to different contexts, as the subject-object relation is blurred
(Abma, 2005).

Research question : What is the effect/impact of an intervention?
Input/process/output - e.g. coaching/mentoring/counselling/ training
Outcome - e.g. performance/ wellbeing
Measurement – e.g. scores.

UIF SAQ:
•Measure personal, social, cultural and professional competence
• http://www.uelpsychology.org/csc/
Recovery-Stress SAQ: Questionnaire (Kellmann &
Kallus, 2001)
•Measure your general stress level (not clinical but social well being).
• http://www.uelpsychology.org/restq76social/

Competence I Personal
(Self)
Awareness Self -
Awareness
II Social
(other)
Empathy
III Cultural
(cross culture organisation and individuals)
IV
Professional
Competence
Enlightenment Reflective
Practice
Management Self -
Regulation
Social Skills Champion Continues
Professional
Development within supervision framework

Example of Multi-Level Modelling:
A Three-Level Hierarchy
Programme
1
Community
1
Programme
2
Individual 1 Individual i Individual i
Programme
1
Community
2
Programme
2
Individual 1 Individual i Individual i
Programme
1
Community
3
Programme
2
Individual 1 Individual i Individual i

– Model the variability in regression slopes
– You can model the relationships between cases
– (Regression for repeated observations)
– MLMs can cope with missing data
Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS
(3rd ed.) London: Sage
.

• Use the same Group’s Scenarios
• Have a think about your target group that you focused on in
Session 4.
• Think about macro-, meso- and micro-level focused interventions that you could recommend.
• How would you evaluate the effectiveness of the changes that you have got planned?
• Now, aim to see if you can draw from the content of today’s session to bring about successful embedding of the evaluation.

Annex 1: Examples of Community Research #1
- Constructivist Research
• Boydell et al. (2000) – qualitative study of 29 homeless people in Toronto,
Canada.
• Used symbolic interactionism to see how sense of self and the homeless person’s social context interacted.
• Main finding – the homeless persons in this study were motivated to maintain a retrospective, positive sense of self. The current sense of self was commonly affected by perceptions of:
– Stigma
– Isolation
– Shame
– Feeling inferior to others
• “I felt disgusted with myself, you know, that I messed up. I felt bad, you know, like I was nobody” (p.31)
• Aim of this study was not to generalise to all homeless persons but to understand their phenomenologies and the constructions of their realities.
Full article via: http://tinyurl.com/9mpfar9

Annex 1: Examples of Community Research #2 -
Transformative Research
• Paradis (2009) A little room of hope: Feminist participatory action research with “homeless” women. PhD thesis. University of Toronto.
• April 2005 – >50 women who were experiencing poverty, homelessness and isolation attended a workshop on human rights at a drop-in centre in Toronto.
• 15 months later, these women had attended weekly workshops on social and economic rights, methods of reacting to and resisting homelessness. They gave testimony to their experiences and their group sent a representative to the United Nations Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
• Conclusion: “homelessness is not only a material state, but more importantly a social process of disenfranchisement enacted through relations of harm, threat, control, surveillance, precarity and dehumanization” (p. ii).
• Project acted at multiple levels including at the macro level.

The Joshua Project: devotes a lot of time and effort to supporting some of the most marginalised community members who are often ignored/rejected by mainstream health, educational and other agencies: http://joshuaproject.org.uk/
Artworks Creative: Works collaboratively with people at ‘street level’ in their communities a great deal of positive change is effected: http://www.artworkscreative.org.uk/
UCL research group looks at processes and outcomes of various forms of psychological helping and support – see: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/clinical-psychology/Research-Groups/phas/
Prof. Jim Orford’s work using community psychology to influence social policy relating to gambling: www.gamblingwatchuk.org