ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights some of the effects of administrating a neighbourhood resource in such a way that it divorces the community development opportunities presented in its own organisation from the services it provides in the field which are concerned precisely with opening up those selfsame opportunities in the action groups to which people belong. The structure of the Project had an important effect on the ways in which these kinds of tensions were articulated and decisions were made. The history of staff tensions at the Southwark Community Project is in part a history of the team’s inability to appreciate the stress to which members were exposed. Individual workers at the Southwark Community Project gave different functions and values to team meetings and to the attempt to work on a collegiate basis. The dual approach seemed to facilitate interaction between community groups and service agencies.
