group work practice

Group Work Practice

Historical Developments

Chapter 2

Treatment Groups: Knowledge

• Grew up mainly in British and American settlement houses

• Offered citizens the opportunity for education, recreation, socialization, and community involvement

• Focus on promoting well-being of members

• Casework historically associated with Social Work

• Group work unidentified with Social Work until 1935

Casework vs. Group Work

• Differ in focus and goal• Differ with respect to helping relationship• Differ in approach • Differ in application • Differ in design


• Caseworkers• Worked with and

diagnosed underprivileged

• Treated by giving resources and acting as examples

• Group Workers• Worked with more than

just the underprivileged • Emphasized client

strengths rather than weaknesses

• Help is a shared relationship

Casework vs. Group Work• Caseworkers• Worked with and

diagnosed underprivileged

• Treated by giving resources and acting as examples

• Group Workers• Worked with more than just

the underprivileged • Emphasized client strengths

rather than weaknesses• Help is a shared relationship

Casework vs Group Work

• Early Writings emphasized improved practice outcomes by careful study, diagnosis and treatment (Mary Richmond)

• Focus is on the individual

• Early Writings emphasized the processes that occurred during group meetings (Grace Coyle)

• Focus is on the group as a whole

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Group Work

• Shared interaction, power and decision making place additional demands on group workers compared to caseworkers

• Used skill to intervene in complex and fast-paced group interactions

• Group worker ‘There are many of THEM but only one of ME’


Additional Resources

Group Work Specific Journals and Articles

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• Social work with groups, 1992, 15(4), 3 -14

Additional Background Articles

Group Work Intervention

What do you think are the most common form of group work?

• The most common forms of group work are with people who abuse alcohol and drugs, with mental health difficulties, young carers, children and young people who are accommodated, teenage mothers, children who are unaccompanied asylum seekers, and offenders.

Intervention Targets

• Historically, targets included educational, recreational, club and settlement house settings

• Today settings include community centers, schools, hospitals, recovery homes, YMCA

• Focus on collective action and democratic living

• Emphasis on social action, social change and social justice

Intervention Targets• 1940’s and 1950’s• Therapy groups become more common

treatment venues• Arose in midst of WWII and the lack of

trained workers to deal with war veterans• Interest in group therapy continued into

1950’s within psychiatric settings• Social Group idea further popularized by

organizations such as Girl Scouts and YMCA

Intervention Groups• 1960’s• Popularity of group services DECLINES• Job training and educational opportunities

more popular than group work services• Social work moving away from specialization

and toward generic view of practice• Fewer schools offered courses in group work• Fewer social workers used it in practice


• 1980’s to current day• Concerted attempts to revitalize group work• Association for the Advancement of Social

Work with Groups• Development of standards on group work

education


• According to Putnam (2001) there continues to be a decline in the number of people participating in groups and voluntary organizations

• He attributes this to:• Time and money• Mobility and sprawl• Availability of technology and mass media

Current Practice Trends

Treatment Groups

• Papell and Rothman (1962)

• 3 important models of group work practice

1. Social Goals

2. Remedial

3. Reciprocal

• Papell, C. & Rothman, B. (1966). Social work models: Possession and heritage. Journal of Education for Social Work 2 (2), 66-77.

• Papell, C. (1997). Thinking about thinking about group work: Thirty years later. Social work with Groups 20 (4), 5-17.

Social Goals Model

1. Purpose and Goals

2. Agency

3. Focus of Work

4. Worker Role

5. Type of Group

6. Methods

1. Social consciousness, social responsibility, informed citizenship, etc.

2. Settlement houses and neighborhood centers.

3. Larger society, individuals within the context of their environment.

4. Role model and enabler for responsible citizenship.

5. Citizens, neighborhood, and community.

6. Discussion, participation, consensus, developing and carrying out group task.

Remedial Model

1. Purpose and Goals

2. Agency

3. Focus of Work

4. Worker Role

5. Type of Group

6. Methods

1. To restore and rehabilitate group members who are dysfunctional.

2. Formal agency – clinical outpatient or inpatient

3. Alleviating problems or concerns. Improving coping skills.

4. Change agent who engages in study, diagnoses, and treatment.

5. Clients who are not functioning adequately and need help coping with life tasks.

6. Structured exercises, direct and indirect influence – within and outside of the group- to help members change behavior patters.

Reciprocal Model1. Purpose and Goals

2. Agency

3. Focus of Work4. Worker Role

5. Type of Group6. Methods

1. Mutual aid system among group members to achieve optimum adaptation and socialization.

2. Compatible with clinical and outpatient settings as well as neighborhood and community centers.

3. Creating a self-help, mutual aid system among the group members.

4. Mediator between group and the larger society. Enabler contributing information not otherwise available to the group..

5. Partners who work together sharing common concerns.

6. Shared authority where members discuss concerns, support one another, and form a cohesive social system to benefit one another.

Divergent and Unified Practice Models

Group Work Practice Knowledge

Systems Theory

• Attempts to understand the group as a system of interacting elements. It is probably the most widely used and broadly applied theory of group functioning.

4 Functions of a System

Every system, including groups, has four functions:

1. Integration – ensuring that members fit together.2. Adaptation – ensuring that groups change to cope

with the demands of the environment.3. Pattern maintenance – ensuring that groups define

and sustain their basic purpose, identity, and procedures

4. Goal attainment – ensuring that groups pursue and accomplish their tasks.

Robert Bales: Group ProblemsGroups face two major challenges:

1. Instrumental problems, such as the group’s reaching its goals. Caused by demands placed on the group by the outside environment.

2. Socioemotional problems, which include interpersonal difficulties, problems of coordination, and member satisfaction. Caused by internal demands.

Robert Freed Bales

Picture from the Harvard Gazette Archives

SYMLOG Systematic Multilevel Observation Groups

• Bales was a pioneer in the development of systematic methods of group observation and measurement of interaction processes

• His goal was the development of "a theory of personality and group dynamics integrated with a set of practical methods for measuring and changing behavior and values in a democratic way."

From the Harvard Gazette Archives

Brief Summary of Systems Theory Influence on Group Theory

• Groups develop properties that arise from the interaction of the individual members.

• The group has a powerful effect on member behavior.

• Groups struggle to maintain themselves as entities when confronted with conflicts.

• Groups must relate to an external environment as well as attend to their internal functioning.

• Groups are dynamic: becoming, developing, and changing

• Groups have a developmental life cycle.

Psychodynamic Theory

• Psychodynamic theory has had an important influence on group work practice.

• Freud (1922) wrote Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.

• Freud’s theories influenced such other theorist as Fritz Perl and his gestalt therapy, Frank Moreno and psychodrama, and Eric Berne with transactional analysis.

Freud and Group Process

• Freud describes the group leader as the all-powerful father figure who reigns supreme over groups members.

• Group members identify with the group leader as the “ego ideal.”

• Members form transference reactions to the group leader and to each other on the basis of their early life experiences.

• The interactions that occur I the group reflect personality structures and defense mechanisms that members began developing in their early life.

Modern Psychodynamic Influence• Yalom extends Freudian theories with an

acknowledgment of the here and now.• Influential on exploring and explaining how

members act within the group.• Wilford Bion developed the Tavastock

approach to help people understand the primitive emotional processes that occur in groups.

Tavistock Premises• The primary task of any group is what it must do to

survive.• The group has a life of its own only as a consequence

of the fantasies and projections of its members.• The group uses its members in the service of its

primary task.• The behavior of any group member at any moment is

the expression of his own needs , history, and behavior patterns, and the needs, history, and behavior patterns of the group.

• Whatever the group is doing or talking about, the group is always talking about itself, reflecting itself.

Learning Theory • Focus is on the individual rather than on the behavior

of groups.• Learning theory has generally ignored the importance

of group dynamics.• The early emphasis on environmental contingencies

and the de-emphasis of free will have led some to conclude that learning theory is deterministic.

• However, learning theory has had an important influence on current methods of group work practice.

Learning Theory Inflouences

• Emphasis on clear and specific goal setting, contracting, the influence of the environment on the group and its members, step-by-step treatment planing, measurable treatment outcomes and evaluation can be traced, at least in part, to the influence of learning theory.

• The growing importance of short-term, structured psychoeducational groups attests to the important influence that learning theory principles have had.

Explaining Group Member Behavior• According to Bandura the behavior of

groups members can be explained by one of three methods of learning.

• Stimulus response• Operant conditioning • Social learning

Mechanics of Social Learning

• Most learning takes place through observation and vicarious reinforcement or punishment.

• For example, when a group member is praised for a certain behavior, that group member and other group members reproduce the behavior later, hoping to receive similar praise.

• When a group member who performs a certain behavior is ignored or punished by social sanctions, other group members learn not to behave in that manner because such behavior results in a negative outcome.

Field Theory• Conducted numerous experiments on the

forces that account for behavior in small groups.

• Created three types of groups with authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership.

• Applied the scientific method in developing a theory of groups.

• In 1944, he and colleagues formed the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the MIT.

• He and associates discovered the concept of Field Theory.

Field Theory

• According to Lewin’s Field Theory, “a group has a life space, it occupies a position relative to other objects in this space, it is oriented toward goals, it locomotes in pursuit of these goals, and it may encounter barries in the process of locomotion.

• The unique contribution of field theory is that it views the group as a gestalt.

Social Exchange Theory

• When people come together in a group each individual in the group attempts to maximize their rewards and minimize their punishments

• An interaction is most likely to occur when the reward for an interaction exceeds the punishment

• Success is measured by comparison with others in the group

Summary

• Historically groups were used for educational, recreational and social purposes

• Today groups are more commonly used for support, mutual aid and therapy

• Theories related to groups include systems, psychodynamic, learning, field and social exchange

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