A Study of Community Guides: Lessons for Professionals Practicing with and in Communities‪.‬

Social workers appreciate the knowledge local populations have to solve local problems, but theory and models of practice are often generated in settings outside the communities in which they are used. An emerging postmodern critique of how social workers position themselves as expert "knowers" is leading the profession to look for sources of helping knowledge indigenous to the communities it serves (Borg, Brownlee, & Delaney, 1995; Howe, 1994; Leonard, 1997; Pease & Fook, 1999; Saleebey, 1994). This article presents a study that used nonprofessional community helpers as a source of knowledge and examines the implications of this nonprofessional expertise for clinical and community practice. Those who have looked at the social work profession through the lens of privileged knowledge caution practitioners to deconstruct the power implicit in what is accepted as truth. As Howe (1994) wrote, "The social work professional is no longer the sole arbiter of the meaning of events" (p. 525). How then, are we to proceed day-to-day