Community-based accompaniment & social work—A complementary approach to social action

ABSTRACT

Accompaniment, or the intentional practice of presence, emphasizes processes and relationships over outcomes, with the ultimate goal of leveraging privilege and collectively changing destructive systems. Though not widely recognized in social work, accompaniment has been applied globally. Here, we outline an overview of accompaniment, including how it has been applied in social work literature and practice. We then propose community-based accompaniment as an approach to complement traditional models of social action as a necessary, yet accessible way to further advance community organizing in social work education and practice, and ultimately promote transformative social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Accompaniment
• social action
• radical social work
• community organizing
• liberation theology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. This project was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Illinois at Chicago.