Group Practice Flashcards
Social Work with Groups: Values Underlying Practice
- All individuals have dignity and worth
- People have a need and a right to realize their full potential
- Individuals have basic rights and responsibilities
- The social work group enacts democratic values and promotes shared decision-making
- Individuals have the right of self-determination in setting and achieving goals
- Positive change is facilitated by honest, open, and meaningful interaction
Social Work with Groups: Advantages of Groups
- Members can help other struggling with the same issues
- Members can identify with others in the same situation
- At times, people in need can more easily accept from peers
- Consensual validation helps members feel less vioalted and more reassured when they discover their problems are similar to those experienced by others
- Groups provide opportunities for experimentation, and testing new social identities and roles
- Group practice is not a substitute for individual treatment; the group is used as a method of choice for some problems and is an essential tool for many social workers
- Group practice may complement other techniques used by generic or multi-method social workers
Practice Principles: Mission and Commitment
strongly held beliefs regarding the power of the small voluntary, primary group experience, democratic participation and association, citizen involvement, and cultural pluralism
group contrasts with both comparative group methods and therapies in the helping professions that stress individual goals, and the social and community action groups that stress social change
consistent with person-in-situation themes, social workers are committed to a consistent and balanced pursuit of both kinds of objectives – meeting personal needs and goals of particular individuals, and meeting specific social needs and goals within the larger environment
Practice Principles: Purposes and Goals
- Practice is characterized by multiple-goals oriented to solving individual and social problems
- Based on the recognition that group experiences have many key functions
- Group types are generally categorized by the types of function they provide for members
Purposes and Goals: Key functions of Groups
- Provide restorative, remedial, or rehabilitative experiences
- Help prevent personal and social distress or breakdown
- To facilitate normal growth and development, particularly during stressful periods in the life cycle
- To achieve a greater measure of self-fulfillment and personal enhancement
- To help individuals to become active, responsible participants in society through group associations
Purposes and Goals: Group Types
Educational
Growth
Therapy
Socialization
Task
Group Types: Educational Groups
focusing on helping members learn new information and skills
Group Types: Growth Groups
provide opportunities for members to become more aware of their own thoughts, feelings, and behavior; develop their individual potentialities
Group Types: Therapy Groups
learn to cope with and ameliorate their personal problems
deal with physical, psychological or social trauma
Group Types: Socialization Groups
help members learn social skills and socially accepted behaviors
groups enable clients to function more effectively in the community
Group Types: Task Groups
formed for the purpose of meeting organizational, client, and community needs and functions
Social Work with Groups: Resources
professionally led groups are the worker’s personal and professional talents, skills, and knowledge, as these are consciously used in the helping process
primary resource for group members
the goal is to harness the power of the group experience to help members achieve their stated goals and objectives
workers encourage the group and its members to develop and use their own resources along with those of the agency and wider community
Resources of the community, agency, and professional association are important sources for additional support in that they provide a sense of direction, purposes and sanction, and human and material resources
Methods: Group work methods may be generally categorized by….?
the quality of relationships
the focus on common group goals
the ability to influence group processes
individualizing and externalizing experiences to the social environment
creative use of activities and programs
Methods: Relationships
group workers form multiple changing relationships with individual group members, with sub-groups, and with the group as a whole
workers also relate differentially to colleagues, agency representatives, relatives, friends, and others who have a stake in member’s experiences
Methods: Contracting Working Agreements
unless members are involved in clarifying and setting their own personal and common group goals, they cannot be expected to be active participants in their own behalf
not confined to worker-member relationships; they also consider others with a direct on indirect stake in the process
Working Agreements: Examples
agency sponsorship
collaborating staffs
referral and funding sources
families
caretakers
other interested parties in the public at large
Relationships: Influencing Group Processes
ability to recognize, analyze, understand, and influence group process is essential
the group is not simply a collection of individuals, but rather a system of relationships formed through associations with a unique and changing quality and character – group structures and processes
Influencing Group Processes: Major Processes
understanding group structure, values systems, group emotions, decision-making, communication and interaction, and group development
Relationships: Individualizing
must be prepared to help individual members gain from their experiences in and through the group
measure of success of any group experience is determined by what happens to group members and they are influenced by its processes, not on how the group itself functions as an entity or systemR
Relationships: Externalizing
work with groups is not confined to the internal workings of the small group; traditionally group workers, as is true of all social workers, constantly search for general principles in their efforts to help clients
even when groups are relatively autonomous, attention is given to helping members relate beyond the group, encouraging active participation and involvement with others in increasingly wider spheres of social living
Relationships: Programming
essential feature in group practice
activities, discussion topics, task-centered activities, exercises, games–all are used as part of a planned, conscious process to address individual and group needs while achieving group purposes and goals
programming does not entail a search for the unusual, esoteric, or melodramatic, and reflects the natural things people do together
Programming: Skills in Implementing Programming
initiating and modifying program plans to respond to group interests, self-direction and responsibility, drawing creatively upon program resources in the agency and environment, and developing sequences of activities with specific long-range objectives
Agency Functions and General Group Characteristics: Agency Function and Purpose – the Organizational Context
shapes a group’s purpose
worker must be clear and harmonious with that of the agency
agency must demonstrate how work with specific groups helps the agency to achieve its community mission
understanding and acceptance of group purposes and functions are important
staffing decisions must be made regarding the styles of group leadership that the agency will promote
Agency Functions and General Group Characteristics: Group Formation
process involves three key elements that require skillful management
setting goals
determining membership
establishing initial group structures and formats
Group Formation: Contracting (Schwartz)
presenting agency stake and reaching for clients’ stake
obtaining consensus on group purposes
eliciting members’ perceptions, and identifying differences and commonalities regarding purposes
the worker and the group identity what members are prepared to do together and how the group plans to achieve goals
Contracting (Schwartz): Worker’s Role
making a clear and uncomplicated statement of purpose – of the members’ stakes in coming together, and the agency’s and others’ stakes in serving them
describing worker’s own part as simply as possible
reaching for feedback
helping members do the work needed to develop a working consensus about the contract
recognizing manifest and latent, stated and unstated goals and hidden or unconscious motivations
re-contracting as needed
Group Composition and Membership Concerns: Selecting Members
worker explains reasons for meeting with group applicants
elicits applicants’ reactions to group participation, and assesses applicants’ situations by engaging applicants’ in expressing their views of the situation and goals in joining the group
worker determines applicants’ appropriateness gor group, accepts applicants’ rights to refuse membership, and provides orientation upon acceptant into the group
Group Composition and Membership Concerns: Commonality
members should share similar concern and face common issues
Group Composition and Membership Concerns: Size
large enough to offer diversity and vitality, but small enough to provide opportunity for full participation without fragmentation
Group Composition and Membership Concerns: Heterogenity vs. Homogeneity
should have sufficient homogeneity to provide stability and generate vitality
Group Composition and Membership Concerns: Space and Time
need adequate space, reasonable meeting frequency to promote continuity, and sufficient time for all members to participate
Group Structures and Formats: Closed Groups
members are convened by worker
begin their experience together as a collective and end the experience after set amount of sessions
What’re the positive of closed groups?
afford better opportunities than open groups for members to identify with each other
lend greater stability to the helping situation; stages of group development evolve more forcefully when the same people struggle with issues of belonging and differentiation, and dealing with the authority of the worker
amount and intensity of commitment are also greater when the same participants can be counted on for their presence
Group Structures and Formats: Open Groups
allow people to enter and leave according to their choice
What’re the positives of open group?
time and its relationship to the helping process remain constant, but the focus shifts somewhat from “group-as-a-whole” process to individual member processes
opportunities to use group social forces to help individuals may be reduced if membership shifts
the group will be less cohesive and, therefore, less available as a therapeutic instrument
open structure keeps the worker in a highly central position throughout the life of the group since s/he provides continuity
Group Structures and Formats: Short-Term Groups
developed around a particular theme or to deal with a crisis
time limitations do not permit the “working on and through” complex needs or accommodating to a variety of issues or themes
worker occupies the central position
Group Structures and Formats: Natural Groups
organize informally but develop group characteristics
worker may not easily detect common need
these groups are usually formed before the worker is involved
more complex since agency goals and member group purposes must be synchronized
the worker should help members articulate individual purposes along with thoughts and feelings about them
should examine individual purposes, and determine common and divergent elements
How’re formed groups formed?
detection of need for group services
determined by identifying common needs among individuals in an agency or worker caseload
understanding of individual and interpersonal behavior related to purpose guides worker in interventions and timing
screening, assessment, and preparation of group members in formed groups are advisable
determining interest and stake in group membership is vital for understanding member participation
voluntary and non-voluntary groups will respond differently
Working Phases: Beginning Phase
Interventive Skills
Beginning Phase: Interventive Skills
tuning into members’ needs, concerns, and ways of experiencing in beginning with a group
worker attempts to use prior knowledge and experience so there is readiness to receive member cues that may be subtle and hard to detect
Interventive Skills: Engagement
seeking members’ committment to participate
Interventive Skills: Ongoing Assessment
needs and concerns
ambivalence and resistance to work
group processes
emerging group structures
individual patterns of interaction
Interventive Skills: Facilitating the Group’s Work
encouraging member participation and interaction
getting real concerns onto the table to begin the work
helping the group remaing focused
reinforcing adherence to group rules
identifying emerging themes to facilitate cohesiveness and focus the work
establishing worker identity in relation to readiness of the group (dependence-independence)
listening empathetically, supporting intitial structure and “ground rules,” and evaluating and sharing initial structure and “ground rules,” and evaluating and sharing initial achievement as a group
suggesting ongoing tasks or themes for the following meeting
Interventive Skills: Stress on Workers
anxiety about gaining acceptance as a resource the the group
integrating group self-determination with an active leadership role (permissiveness vs. control)
fear of creating dependency and self-consciousness as a deterrent to spontaneity
difficulty in observing and relating to multiple interactions
uncertainty about role
