Outreach—the opening up of access to social services, information and opportunities—is arguably a crucial yet understudied aspect of social work practice. This study revisits ‘outreach’ as concept, using data from ‘hard to reach’ communities, specifically refugees. Our findings illuminate ‘task-shifting’, whereby professional service providers sought the help of grassroots community leaders in reaching refugees. Findings also point to issues of bidirectionality, credibility and on-the-spot assistance as aspects of outreach work. Theoretically, we apply a structural lens to problematise ‘access’ as an individual level concept, and instead turn attention to the ‘inaccessibility’ of services instead. We problematise the ‘hard-to-reachness’ of communities, and call instead for examining our services and institutions for their limited reach.

中文翻译：

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“难以到达”社区的外展工作：对任务转移、建立联系、建立信誉以及现场、以解决方案为重点的援助的批判性分析

外展——开放社会服务、信息和机会——可以说是社会工作实践中一个至关重要但尚未得到充分研究的方面。这项研究使用来自“难以接触”社区（特别是难民）的数据，重新审视了“外展”这一概念。我们的研究结果阐明了“任务转移”，即专业服务提供者寻求基层社区领导人的帮助来接触难民。调查结果还指出了外展工作的双向性、可信度和现场援助等问题。从理论上讲，我们应用结构性视角将“获取”作为个人层面的概念进行问题化，并将注意力转向服务的“不可获取性”。我们提出社区“难以到达”的问题，并呼吁检查我们的服务和机构的覆盖范围是否有限。