A Community Social Work Paradigm: Thoughts and Reflections.

Community social work (CSW) is often regarded as a practice with a variety of intervention models. The objectives of the present article are to examine CSW's philosophical and theoretical roots and to bridge the gap in the literature regarding the theoretical and philosophical origins of CSW and to conceptualize these theoretical bases as a paradigm with ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological aspects. The ontology of the proposed CSW paradigm relies on ecological theory, critical theory, and community psychology.