COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesThe trend is to consider the educational psychologist as “school property” instead of developing the idea of acommunity psychologist composed of different social roles: school-family-social health institutions - educationalinstitutions -working world- formal or informal associations.All linear interventions of empowerment are useful to acquire new teaching methods and to understand socialchanges and human growth better; yet if we do not want to continue in an unorganized way what is required is anoverall view which would connect the expectations of the different social roles who take part in the developmentof a civil society.I assume that these lenses could be worn by a psychologist who is not just a piece of a system but is located in a“mid” position; like a junction in the net which is able to see itself over the net.I think there should be figures in the “system” who are able to interconnect the inner school competences and todevelop effective and trustworthy styles of life for people who come into contact with the systems around it.Inside the social health services there should be professional figures with the above competences, who are ableto connect treatment and rehabilitation to the different people who come into them: the single person, the family,the friendship system, the job, the school and the social health services. Is it a privilege of the communitypsychology? I would say so.Inside the Italian Health Service a new executive figure with high responsibility has been introduced with the taskto coordinate the sanitary interventions and the social ones.If this figure in the “system” is well interpreted it can interface with the most representative social institutions in thelocal area such as the working world, voluntary work, family associations, health and social services, and inparticular the school.In my local health authority in Parma there is this kind of figure and from the above coordination the project “let’sfly” started.I would define “Let’s fly” as Bateson would say: the connecting structure”, not as if it was a glue but as a net to beknotted. The psychologists who have been working on this project for five years now, have worked together toresolve the problems, to draw the lens near and all this has been possible due to the fact that they are able tocommunicate with all the institutions involved.I believe a community psychologist must be with the whole “community” and not just a piece of the community. Atthe most he could match the pieces and help them to communicate.The psychologist of “Let’s fly” does not belong to the schools but supports them in order to help them to havedifferent views from inside and outside.There is a certain amount of unsuited “educational treatment” for the children of the primary and middle schoolwhich runs the risk of being changed into a “suffering to be cured” when they are teenagers and adults. It isreferred to all the borderline situations of a normal and natural psycho-emotional and relational difficulty of growthon one hand, and on the other hand a real pathology of growth.It is a situation where the teachers find it difficult to enter because they think of not having suitable instruments;so as do, partly correctly, the experts of the health services (children neuropsychiatry), since there are often268