Community development and preventive work

The theoretical frame of reference in connection with prevention, some theoretical approaches, and the practical consequences of giving priority to prevention are discussed. The following points are stressed: that one must expand the theoretical frame of reference of prevention to include theory on local community, social networks and concepts of mutuality and self-supporting processes that preventive work is most efficient when it is developed in the form of fruitful interaction between primary intervention and selective intervention that giving priority to preventive work rather than implementing continuous expansion of institutions and fields of administration involves changes in the ones that already exist.