Social work degree students must be confident in working with groups of service users as well as other professionals. This revised new edition introduces the practicalities of planning, establishing, facilitating and evaluating social work projects including small helping groups as well as interprofessional working parties. The authors examine the best methods in setting up a group, the issues around power and anti-oppressive practice, and how to cope with unexpected or unhelpful outcomes. This second edition features new material on sociodrama and psychodrama action methods, with more examples from actual groupwork projects.
Working with families, carers, groups and communities is something all social work students must prepare for. Written to guide you through these varied and complex groupwork situations, this book explores the knowledge, skills and values required for groupwork practice. Divided into two parts, the first provides an understanding of groupwork, its concepts and contexts, while the second takes you step-by-step through groupwork practice, from planning and preparation, to starting out, facilitating and finally ending work with a group. Different service contexts including work with children, with users who have learning disabilities, in mental health settings, and more, are covered throughout the book, with case studies, activities and reflective opportunities helping you to understand the complexities of these contexts. This text is a comprehensive and contemporary guide to groupwork in social work today.
This comprehensive handbook presents major theories of social work practice with groups and explores contemporary issues in designing and evaluating interventions. Students and practitioners gain an in-depth view of the many ways that groups are used to help people address personal problems, cope with disabilities, strengthen families and communities, resolve conflict, achieve social change, and more. Offering authoritative coverage of theoretical, practical, and methodological concerns--coupled with a clear focus on empowerment and diversity--this is an outstanding text for group work and direct practice courses.
Help change the world by bringing ideas of social justice into your group work practice! Social workers who use hip-hop music to reach out to troubled adolescents. Practitioners who compare First Nations talking circles with social work practice with groups. A retired professor who transforms the way her fellow senior living center residents participate in their world. Fathers of children with spina bifida who help one another through an online discussion group. These and other examples you’ll discover in Social Work with Groups: Social Justice Through Personal, Community, and Societal Change will help you to assist groups to gain a sense of empowerment and create change in their own lives and communities. In Social Work with Groups: Social Justice Through Personal, Community, and Societal Change you’ll also find: definitions of social justice within the context of social work a proposal to help focus on social justice in teaching guidelines for group facilitators making decisions about self-disclosure studies of innovative group work discussion of the challenges to achieving social justice in group work valuable ways to ground social group work in rich cultural traditions This new book rides the crest of the growing wave of justice in social work with groups. Culled from the proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium of the Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups, it gives you the innovations and current thinking of professionals who, while coming from different cultural and professional backgrounds, are focused on helping all people enjoy the same rights and opportunities. If you want to use group work to challenge social inequality, Social Work with Groups will be a welcome addition to your library. Social action that gets results has to start somewhere—let it begin with you!
Social Work With Groups describes continuity and change in group work. It revisits the theoretical ideas of group work and group work topics of the past decade, focusing on the continuity of group work theory and practice. At the same time it emphasizes the need for change to more effectively work with deal with people in new groups in need--people with AIDS, gangs, persons in grief, and minorities, as well as groups always in need but now with new and additional needs--families, children, adolescents. This book deals with how to meet the needs of existing and emerging populations. It shows a good combination of theory and practice of group work in a variety of settings and using traditional techniques with new groups. Chapters in this book revisit the theoretical ideas of group work such as stages of development and the question of self-determination in groups. The sections of theory are the basis for the more practical emphasis of what today’s group worker is doing and how they are doing it. Social Work With Groups is very practice oriented. As such, anybody who uses groups to help people will find much to read and reflect upon. With its across-the-board appeal, persons new to group work will delight in the practical information, and experienced group workers will find the revisiting of the issues a helpful and refreshing approach. Clinical social workers and faculty with an interest in theory and theoretical approaches to group work will appreciate the theory addressed in the book. Social change oriented practitioners searching for new methods of empowerment among the people will find helpful suggestions in this book for social, political, and grassroots activism.
Group work is a popular and widely used social work method. Focusing particularly on the central role of mutual aid in effective group work, this text presents the theoretical base, outlines core principles, and introduces the skills for translating those theories and principles into practice. A Mutual-Aid Model for Social Work with Groups will help readers to catalyze the strengths of group members such that they become better problem solvers in all areas of life from the playroom to the boardroom. Increased coverage of evaluation and evidence-based practice speaks to the field’s growing concern with monitoring process and assessing progress. The book also includes: worker-based obstacles to mutual aid, their impact, and their antidotes pre-group planning including new discussion on curriculum groups group building by prioritizing certain goals and norms in the new group the significance of time and place on mutual aid and the role of the group worker maintaining mutual aid during so-called individual problem solving an expanded discussion of anti-oppression and anti-oppressive practice unlocking a group’s potential to make difference and conflict useful special considerations in working with time-limited, open-ended, and very large groups. Case examples are used throughout to help bridge the gap between theory and practice, and exercises for class or field, help learners to immediately apply conceptual material to their practice. All resources required to carry out the exercises are contained in over 20 appendices at the end of the book. Key points at the end of each chapter recap the major concepts presented, and a roster of recommended reading for each chapter points the reader to further resources on each topic. Designed to support ethical and successful practice, this textbook is an essential addition to the library of any social work student or human service practitioner working with groups.
This highly successful book on groupwork practice, first published in 1979, has become a standard introductory text on most social work training courses. It is very popular with social workers, whatever their agency setting, and is also used by health visitors, youth workers and the voluntary sector. This new enlarged and revised third edition includes two new additional chapters. The first of these addresses the issue of groupwork in day and residential centres where special kinds of group skills are required in addition to those already well established for fieldwork groups. The second new chapter attempts to understand the significance of race and gender in groupwork and to begin to develop a framework for anti-discriminatory practice. All key sections from previous editions have been retained and updated, while those on group composition, open groups, co-working and consultation have been extended and revised to give more comprehensive coverage. The bibliography has also been developed to include the most recent additions to the groupwork literature, including many articles from the journal Groupwork for which Allan Brown is co-editor.
This fully updated and expanded third edition of a classic text provides a comprehensive introduction to key theory, knowledge, research and evidence relating to practice learning in social work and social care. It outlines the theories that underpin social care practice, the main assessment models and interventions, and also offers guidance on the effective implementation of assessment across a range of professional contexts. Contributors from research, policy-making and practice backgrounds offer guidance on how to apply policy and research findings in everyday practice while ensuring that the complex needs of each individual service user are met. This third edition also features new chapters on group work, social pedagogy and personalisation. The Handbook for Practice Learning in Social Work and Social Care is an essential resource for ensuring effective evidence-based practice which will be valued by students, educators and practitioners alike.
One of the most effective ways of dealing with social problems is getting rid of the cause of the problem, not just finding a remedy for the result. Social Action in Group Work provides a useful overview of the history, philosophy, theory, and practice of social group work and action in the promotion of societal change. It shows practitioners how to use their skills effectively to achieve social change. This helpful book incorporates ideas developed in social movements, identifies their contributions to social group work practice, and illustrates effective practice in case experience with specific examples. It provides a much-needed understanding of the need for and process of social action, along with new ideas for theory building, teaching, and practice in group work. Numerous case examples from a variety of different settings become models that will be extremely useful for social work students, educators, professionals, and those who work directly with groups.This invigorating book is divided into three sections, each with a unique focus, and tied together by overlapping concepts, theories, and models. The first section, Ideas of Social Action, examines the history of social action in group work and proposes an integrated global framework for social work organization, education and practice. Advocacy and Empowerment, the middle section, is replete with case examples. The third section, Principles and Practice, explores the application of social group work in a variety of situations, including inter-ethnic conflict and a group of homeless men and women. Together, the sections make a strong stand for a more sensitive, empowerment oriented practice and for more advocacy by the worker and group. Everyone involved or interested in the process of social change through social action with groups will find Social Action in Group Work a wealth of practical information.
