Organizational Insight and the Education of Advanced Group Work Practitioners

SUMMARY

This article is the second piece about a group work course designed for advanced work-study students who are not in field placement. It discusses how group workers can use organizational analysis to improve group work practice in agencies with both social conflict and social transition functions. Practice examples illustrate how students promote group work principles in settings where the method has historically had limited currency.     

RAP Therapy: A Group Work Intervention Method for Urban Adolescents

ABSTRACT

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) places a premium on the development of cultural competence among practitioners. To this end, the present study highlights how social work practitioners, specifically group work leaders, can utilize elements of the culture of urban adolescents to develop effective group work intervention strategies. The article compares adolescent participants' perceptions of usefulness of traditional group therapy and similar group work sessions using RAP music as a conduit to support prosocial skills development. A nomenclature of three adolescent groups was tested: violent offenders, status offenders, and a control condition of high school students with no criminal history. Findings were unequivocally in favor of the RAP therapy as a tool for advancing prosocial behavior.     

Maybe We Should Just Shut Up: The Body as an Important Consideration for Group Work Practice

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of the human body as an important consideration for group work. It discusses six concepts related to how the body can be paid attention to and utilized within the realm of practice. These concepts include the idea of the body as related to the sense of self; physical experience as metaphor; the body as a barometer of group experience; shared physical experience and group cohesion; physical experiences and behavior; and the notion of somatic intelligence and communication. Examples of each are discussed from the lens of the author's practice.     

A Punch,A Stitch,A Bell: The Power of Nondeliberative Practice in Social Group Work

ABSTRACT

This article examines the nondeliberative approach in social work with groups through five qualities inherent in the modality. It explores how the practice stands out as unique and valuable within the field: how it taps what other modalities may not by truly meeting the members where they are in space and time. Using examples taken from an array of social group work programs spanning 20 years, it illustrates how the nondeliberative approach takes place in diverse locations and utilizes diverse mediums and modes of communication. Special recognition is given to Norma Lang who articulated the theory about this approach.     

The Person-in-Environment Perspective in Social Work Journals

Abstract

Disagreement over the meaning, utility, and implementation of the person-in-environment (p-i-e) perspective represents social work's efforts to continually redefine itself in a dynamic world. The choice of a guiding perspective is significant, particularly in this era in which concern about the interdependence of global social, economic, and environmental systems is growing. Much of the debate about the p-i-e has taken place in social work journals. This article provides an empirical assessment of how social work scholars have interpreted and applied p-i-e related concepts in social work journals, through the use of a computer-assisted content analysis of all article abstracts in core journals reviewed in Social Work Abstracts (SWA) from 1987 to 1996.     

Themes in Group Work with Lesbian and Gay Adolescents

ABSTRACT

Lesbian and gay youth often face severe isolation, growing up in an environment that is frequently ignorant of their unique needs and hostile toward them. Youth groups can serve a vital role in overcoming this isolation in addition to providing a safe space for working out the various problems surrounding the stigma of growing up gay. This article presents several themes in group work with lesbian and gay adolescents based on the author's experience as a group worker at a lesbian and gay youth project. Isolation, coming out, learning/re-learning, and initiation into a community are offered as four main themes which provide a foundation for understanding how to help lesbian and gay adolescents in groups.     

Group Work with First Episode Schizophrenia Clients

ABSTRACT

Group work with first episode schizophrenia clients is an effective way of improving ego functioning, building adaptive coping skills, and addressing the painful feelings associated with learning of this diagnosis. First episode schizophrenia clients are typically in their late teens to late twenties, and confront the cognitive disability, the stigma and the loss of social roles and statuses at a developmentally difficult stage of emotional growth. The dynamic processes by which cohesive groups reduce isolation, build self-esteem, and provide peer support are illustrated with case material. The group work consists of integrating psychoeducation with clients' concerns in order to provide optimal adjustment to the disease. The groups described in this article are structured within a continuing care team treatment model in a medical facility, but the group work discussed may be utilized in a variety of settings.     

How Creative Group Work Helps Adolescents Create Relations with Self and Peers

ABSTRACT

Practitioners often face questions about how to approach adolescents to join a group where they can develop healthy relationships with themselves and their peers. A growing number of practitioners and researchers value creative—nondeliberative—forms of working with such groups. This article discusses the artful, actional methods the authors use in their work with time-limited small groups of adolescents (age 14–17) who experienced behavioral challenges. These creative methods were used in settings such as secondary schools, counseling centers, and nongovernmental organizations in Lithuania during social skills training groups facilitated by the social workers.     

Some Bibliographic Practices in Interdisciplinary Work: Accounting for Citations in Library and Information Sciences

Interdisciplinary studies involve the use of concepts, methods and theories developed in other disciplines. Using sociology and library and information science as researchable fields, this paper examines how interdisciplinary presentations appropriate discipline-specific concepts. Itemizing materials in a bibliography is a claim to familiarity with the content of those materials. Bibliographic anomalies are apparent in papers by Elfreda Chatman, published in library and information science journals. Misspellings and disjunctive uses of material suggests that Chatman is unfamiliar with the literature bases she invokes. Working through texts and accompanying bibliographies, this article shows how the entailments of research programs that Chatman claims to use can be reflected back onto her own work. The article provides suggestions on how to make interdisciplinary studies more accountable to academic communities.     

Crossing Boundaries: Comparing Group Work in the United States and Australia

ABSTRACT

This article compares the teaching and practice of group work in Australia and the U.S., including data on both students and practitioners, group work content in selected schools of social work, the types of groups offered and client populations served. Implications for cross-cultural social work are discussed as are areas of future international collaboration and research.     

Exploring Nondeliberative Practice through Recreational,Art, and Music-Based Activities in Social Work with Groups

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the history of recreational, arts, and music-based activities in social work with groups, providing a nondeliberative practice context. The article begins with an overview of nondeliberative practice, then presents various uses of recreational, art, and music-based activities during the Settlement House and Recreational Movements, in mid-20^th-century group work practice and in present practice. The article concludes with a review of current projects in the Chicago land area and highlights their potential to decrease young person on young person violence.     

Facilitating Arts-Based Mindfulness Group Activities with Vulnerable Children: An Example of Nondeliberative Social Group Work Practice

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the process of facilitating arts-based mindfulness group work and activities with vulnerable children age 8 to 12 years who were involved with the child welfare or mental health systems. Specifically, it delineates connections between our group program and Norma Lang’s nondeliberative social group work practice. Importantly, in working with vulnerable children, the authors purposefully fostered the development of mutual aid, creativity, and strengths and recognized that each group had a life of its own.     

The Essential Power of Group Work

SUMMARY

For almost two decades, leaders in the field of social group work have been warning that the foundational principles and practice of group work as a modality are in danger of being absorbed into generalist social work practice. This paper expands upon the appeal of leaders in the social group work field to generate an environment in which group work is recognized as an integral method in social work practice and education. This paper examines group work as a powerful methodology in social work practice with a specific theoretical framework and skill base that is fundamental to the social work profession. The characteristics of group work's strengths are explored with a comprehensive overview that inspires renewed commitment to preserving, practicing and promoting social group work as a viable and integral part of social work practice.     

Mutual Aid During a Pandemic: A Group Work Class Example

ABSTRACT

The pandemic of 2020 had faculty pivoting quickly from face-to-face to remote teaching. Many of us had to manage this herculean task with little know-how and within a short time-frame. Best practices were unclear given the highly individualized circumstances in which students were now living. Group work within an educational framework is possible and can help students effectively manage the stresses resulting from sudden crisis situations. The key to group work as practiced by social workers is mutual aid and it was this process that emerged in an online class for undergraduate students. It was not planned yet evolved in large part due to students’ capacity for caring, empathy, and connection.     

Preparing Social Work Students to Work with Grandparents in Kinship Care

Summary

Grandparents in kinship care represent an expanding population of older adults assuming primary parenting responsibilities for their grandchildren at a time when many grandparents may also be experiencing developmental changes accompanying their own aging process. Research documents a lack of social workers prepared to respond to the needs of an aging population in general, and grandparents in kinship care in particular, as curricular content on this population has been limited in undergraduate and graduate social work programs. This article describes an infusion model proposed for an undergraduate social work program's GeroRich Project designed to introduce content on an aging population in four foundation courses to expand students' knowledge of older adults and grandparents as kinship care providers.     

Social Work Education as Professional Socialization

Abstract

Professional socialization in social work is the subject of the panel study described in this article. It focuses upon the impact of different social work education programs upon the professional preferences of students in the United States and Israel. The findings indicate that significant change with regard to some of the variables did occur between the beginning and completion of studies. This generally took the form of a declinein preferences though a number of cross-culture differences were observed. The implications of the findings for the issue of professional socialization in social work are discussed.     

Residential Treatment: Contextual Learning and Demand for Work from a Social Group Work Perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the implications of integrating social group work theory to residential treatment facilities in order to improve therapeutic engagement of clientele. This examination focuses on the natural and serendipitous construction of groups within residential treatment facilities. These natural groups provide frontline workers with constellations that are symmetrical to the knowledge-base of social group work theory. In addition, this paper incorporates the initial phases of social group work stage theory as a means of providing opportunity for contextual learning to residential clientele as well as planning appropriate demand for work within these settings.     

Hardiness,Successful Aging,and HIV: Implications for Social Work

ABSTRACT

With dramatic developments in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, life expectancy is increasing, resulting in more middle-aged and older adults living with this disease. Little is known about the problems, and especially the strengths, of those living and aging with HIV. Hardiness is used in the gerontological literature to describe and explain how people age successfully, despite traumatic life events and chronic diseases. Similarly, the concept of hardiness may be used to guide clinicians, researchers, and clients on how to age successfully with HIV. This article provides a review of hardiness in aging and HIV, and emphasizes its importance in facilitating successful aging with this disease. Conceptual and methodological concerns in studying hardiness and successful aging are addressed. Potential interventions and clinical implications for social work are posited for augmenting qualities of hardiness in people aging with HIV.