Threads across the world: sewing resilience into the fabric of children’s lives

Strengthening the ecological resilience factors in the lives of children that have been abused can help them to navigate the healing process. It is through group work that children can share their “resilience wisdom” with one another as a healing community. There is a dearth of research on cross-cultural resilience programs for children who have been abused. This article explores a group work program that was conducted for one year in Bolivia and Australia. The results from each group reveal the similarities and the differences in outcomes between children from different cultural backgrounds that participated in a resilience group work program.     

ASSERTIVENESS IN RECOVERY

This paper is a presentation of the theory and use of Assertiveness in Recovery groups as a model of intervention with alcoholics and significant others during the recovery phase of alcoholism. It focuses upon a rationale that many alcohol-affected individuals need specialized help in changing characteristically dysfunctional drinking behavior and suggests that assertiveness training techniques within a social groupwork format can be adapted adequately to this need.     

Research Review: Family group decision-making: a promising practice in need of more programme theory and research

The use of family group decision‐making (FGDM) in child protection is rapidly increasing throughout the world. This paper provides a brief overview of the research evidence from 1996 to 2005 and proposes future directions for both practice and research. The purpose of the review is to help move the discussion of FGDM from a promising practice to an evidence‐based practice. The research review considers what is known about the child welfare outcomes of FGDM. The paper then turns to research concerning which families are offered FGDM and which FGDM processes appear to be important. The paper concludes with specific suggestions for developing FGDM programmes that can improve child protection practice and then testing these specific programmes in rigorous trials.     

The Helpfulness of Holistic Arts–Based Group Work with Children Living in Foster Care

This article discusses practice-based research that is exploring the helpfulness of holistic arts–based group work for the development of self-awareness and self-esteem in children living in foster care. The group program is arts based and encourages children to explore their beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. Examples of group exercises are provided, challenges in developing this group program are discussed, and qualitative research findings are presented, which are based on the analysis of fifteen 6-week groups. Findings indicate that children learned new skills, improved coping abilities, connected with feelings, and felt more positive. Practitioners are encouraged to consider how arts-based group work can help children in care.     

自助小组的建立、运行及作用——以艾滋病感染者自助小组为例

提高艾滋病感染者的生活质量和生存质量,既需要社会各方面的支持,更需要艾滋病感染者自身的努力。自助小组是艾滋病感染者消除社会歧视、提升个人能力、获取社会资源的重要平台。本文采用质性研究的方法,调查了艾滋病感染者自助小组的发展状况,总结了自助小组的作用,分析自助小组存在的问题,提出了解决问题的对策。     

Goal Setting Process: Supporting Choice in a Feminist Group for Women with Alcohol Problems

ABSTRACT

Women who seek help for alcohol related concerns may have goals ranging from maintaining abstinence to moderating or simply monitoring their drinking. Facilitating a group when participants' goals vary is challenging but not impossible. The potential for slipping into the common stance of identifying abstinence as the most desirable goal can be avoided by sensitive group facilitation. This paper describes how a feminist group intervention employed the group process to support decision-making across a range of goal choices; it provides some guidance on how social group workers can assist in the difficult work of identifying, clarifying, and working toward self-selected goals.     

对农村文化贫困女性的社会学考究

农村女性文化贫困体现在文化素质低、思想观念陈旧、生活方式落后、心理健康堪忧等方面。农村女性应以进城务工女性和都市现代女性作为参照群体,以她们的价值和规范作为评价自身和她人的基准,从自身主观意识的觉醒、自立意识的增强、文化水平的提高、文化生活品位提升等方面来解决其文化贫困问题,以积极状态面对生活,在社会主义新农村建设和农村文化建设中发挥积极作用。     

Advocacy and Social Action: Key Elements in the Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work

The structural approach to direct practice in social work assumes that opportunities and resources are unequally distributed and that members of deprived and vulnerable populations are social victims. Thus, the basic thrust of the social worker is to change oppressive situations instead of the people trapped in them. Disenfranchised, powerless, and oppressed people need a fairer share of basic economic and social goods. This makes advocacy a key practice role involving both work with groups of clients and with others who can make things happen for clients. The paper describes and illustrates instances of advocacy as the structurally oriented social worker applies six basic principles to help meet the needs of clients.     

Alternative to incarceration for low‐income non‐custodial parents

Increasingly, low‐income non‐custodial parents in the USA, primarily fathers, are at risk of incarceration for failure to make child support payments, clogging the prison system, preventing already at‐risk fathers from holding a job and removing them from relationships with their children. This paper examines an innovative programme in one south‐eastern state that provides an alternative to incarceration for non‐compliant parents, also allowing fathers an opportunity to find gainful employment; to learn valuable life skills; and to establish healthier relationships with their children. Data analysis from 3 years of programme implementation suggests that low‐income non‐custodial fathers enrolled in the Alternative to Incarceration programme have a much greater chance to fulfil their obligations, both as wage earners and as parents, when they are in a programme that provides life skills, helps them find employment and provides other supports to help them improve their life situation rather than incarcerating them for non‐payment of child support. Furthermore, this programme represents a substantial cost savings to the state, as hundreds of fathers have remained outside of the prison system. To date, this alternative to incarceration is a promising solution to a previously intractable problem.     

A psychosocial approach to supporting injured dancers

Professional dancers experience injury as a crisis and threat to identity that often leads to numerous psychosocial concerns. This article describes a group model designed to help injured dancers recover. As a program of The Actors Fund, this 10-week Support Group for Injured Dancers reduces unwanted isolation caused by injury and provides dancers with strategies for stress reduction and healing. The purpose of this article is to aid practitioners in mitigating emotional distress among injured dancers by providing the history and rationale behind the group, an overview of the group’s structure and methods, and suggestions for further research and growth.     

‘I make use of my precious experience,and help others. It's a kind of blessing.’ Does public sharing of past experiences help in the rehabilitation of former offenders or drug abusers?

The Community Education Service (CES) of The Society of Rehabilitation and Crime Prevention (SRACP) has pioneered the adoption of life education in crime prevention education in Hong Kong since 1977. Under this programme, former offenders and drug abusers are recruited to share their experiences with community audiences. Through such sharing, it is hoped that the former offenders and drug abusers will gain a deeper insight into the consequences of committing crime or abusing drugs, have the courage to admit their failings and find the way to lead a more fulfilling and law-abiding life.

In the past, different organizations have employed former offenders and drug abusers in educational programmes, particularly in relation to the prevention of juvenile delinquency. A number of studies demonstrate the educational effectiveness of sharing past deviant behaviours with audiences. Moreover, the mission of SRACP is to help the reintegration into society of former offenders and drug abusers. Consequently, employing former offenders and drug abusers to share their experiences serves another important function; to facilitate the transformation of their past histories into valuable assets and help with their own rehabilitation during the process of serving others, as suggested by ‘helper therapy’ and ‘professional ex-s’ (Brown 1991). A successful rehabilitation means success in reducing recidivism.

This paper examines whether sharing one's real-life experiences with others can influence the rehabilitation process, and provides recommendations for improving service delivery to benefit both audience and the speakers themselves. Fifteen individuals who were formerly either offenders or drug abusers, aged between 18 and 45 years, and who had led a ‘clean’ life for the previous six months, took part in in-depth interviews in order to investigate their perceptions of the function of real-life experience sharing in their own rehabilitation. Concepts of labelling theory (Becker 1963) and self-fulfilling prophecy (Wilkins 1976) provided the framework for these interviews.

The study concludes that respondents are normally able to help themselves to resist crime and drugs, given that the internal and external factors affecting sharing are well addressed. The results identify practical implications and directions for future involvement of former offenders and drug abusers in community-based crime prevention education programmes.     

Nondeliberative Practice from the Field: Illustrations from a Group Worker

ABSTRACT

This article reviews features of Lang’s nondeliberative practice and provides illustrations from the field of group work that demonstrate these concepts. Nondeliberative practice enables problem solving in ways other than verbal and cognitive: the experience of a group of women who went on their first Outward Bound trip into the wilderness; adolescents who, through acting as their favorite living creature, made connections in nonverbal ways. The “doing” of the activity—be it symbolic, pictorial, performance, game, or other actional mode— is experienced affectively and analogically, and is transferable to other aspects of life.     

The Power of Learning and Men’s Stories in Engaging Abusive Men in the Change Process: Qualitative Study Across Programs

This study draws upon input from facilitators (n = 8) and a sample of men who committed acts of domestic abuse (n = 14) from two urban programs. A key finding of the research was that “learning things and motivation to learn” was an important factor keeping men engaged in treatment. Men also reported that hearing other mens’ stories was a motivator for change. These findings validated the importance of open-ended groups with an educational format. They also suggest that men already in treatment can be of value to others just beginning the treatment process by sharing their stories of change.     

The Significance of Affirmative Action for theSouls of White Folk: Further Implications of a Helping Model

We develop further our model of affirmative action as help (Pratkanis & Turner, 1996b; Turner & Pratkanis, 1994) by looking at the impact of aid on the donor. White Americans often take one of three approaches toaffirmative action. First, they can reject affirmative action because of their own personal frustrations. Second, they can engage in selective aid that maintains the basic patterns of social dominance. Both of these approaches can damage the psychological functioning of Whites. Third, White Americans can proactively seek to remove discriminatory barriers in a process we call democratic altruism, thereby opening the possibility of learning from diverse others and growth as a person. We conclude by discussing tactics for promoting democratic altruism.     

Helping each other: a peer supervision group with facilitators of mutual aid groups

ABSTRACT

Mutual aid groups can help people cope with life’s problems. A peer supervision group can help facilitators to better understand their role and improve their facilitating skills in mutual aid groups. Peer supervision groups aim to support facilitators ability to reflect on their difficulties in working with groups, deepen their methodological questions, and improve their understanding regarding how to best proceed as facilitators. This paper studied a peer supervision group of experts-by-experience facilitators to demonstrate the dynamics of mutual aid that characterized the group’s functioning.     

Teaching Social Work with Groups: Integrating Didactic,Experiential and Reflective Learning

Social work with groups can be taught in many ways, with literature identifying the use of didactic and experiential methods to encourage knowledge and skill development, and reflective learning that identifies group concepts as they emerge within the classroom dynamic. This teaching model rather than focusing on one of these methods integrates all three, ensuring that the course is structured and learning is layered in a way that allows the development of the class as a group to create a space of safety from which students can risk new behaviors, integrate knowledge, develop skills, and grow in confidence.     

The Influence of Heuristics on Psychological Science: A Case Study of Research on Creativity

Research heuristics—implicit rules used to guide work on a scientific problem—are explored for their role in guiding psychological research. Work on the psychology of creativity is used to illustrate how heuristics have guided research. We examine the influence of three heuristics: the trilogy-of-mind heuristic, the emotions-as-moods heuristic, and the analysis-of-variance heuristic. This analysis of multiple heuristics provides a new way to understand the state of research on creativity. In the discussion, the analysis is extended to other heuristics and to how heuristics may help as well as hinder innovative research.     

Military Veterans Sharing First‐Person Stories of War and Homecoming: A Pathway to Social Engagement,Personal Healing,and Public Understanding of Veterans' Issues

What power, meaning and value may exist within a soldier's first‐person war story? Former Marine captain Tyler Boudreau, quoted below, suggests that constructing a personal narrative of the traumas of war and homecoming, then “asking questions” of the story, can provide a veteran with a “chart.” If this is so, can that chart help one along the road to healing from those traumas, especially when that story is shared with others? Could there be dangerous turns or pitfalls on the journey? How can a public sharing of narratives of wartime experiences help audiences to better respond to those veterans and families who must cope with a difficult transition from the battlefield to home? What guidelines can be used effectively to train and prepare storytellers for their role? In this collaborative article, strengthened by the clinical wisdom of various consulting clinicians, we examine these questions through the lenses of two programs that provide veterans opportunities to share their war stories publicly. They include the Veterans Education Project (VEP) and the “100 Faces of War Experience” project (100 Faces).