Supporting Family Carers Through Telephone-Mediated Group Programs: Opportunities For Gerontological Social Workers

ABSTRACT

Telephone-mediated group programs are an important but under-utilized medium for reaching frail or disabled older persons' family carers who are in need of support. The primary purpose and style of group programs can range across a broad spectrum–encompassing educational, supportive and therapeutic types. Gerontological social workers are the members of the multidisciplinary care team whose training, experience and supervision makes them most suitable for facilitating this broad range of group types. Drawing on the experience of training a number of group facilitators, this article provides suggestions for social workers contemplating the use of telephone-mediated groups and highlights groupwork skills peculiar to conducting group programs via the telephone.     

Survivor of Suicide Loss Support Group Facilitators: Do Peers and Professionals Differ?

ABSTRACT

Suicide is a major public health issue affecting countless people each year worldwide. Support groups are one of the few resources available to survivors of suicide loss to aid the healing journey. This study examined differences among support group facilitators based on status as a peer, professional, or peer/professional. Differences emerged among the facilitator types, particularly on attitudes of group effectiveness, the role of sharing stories in the group, when loss survivors should attend, and who should facilitate groups. The results provide important insights about group facilitation differences, though further research is necessary to understand effective approaches. A degree in social work was the most common educational background for facilitators who identified as professionals. As social workers often facilitate groups or work alongside peers in the provision of support groups across a variety of areas, the findings provide insights regarding facilitation differences to which social workers may need to attend.     

Dialogue and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary and Transformative History

Intergroup dialogue is an interdisciplinary field of practice that seeks to improve intergroup relations and effect social change. The use of dialogue as a method is growing within numerous social science professions including social work, and an understanding of the origins of dialogue will allow current practitioners to place their work within a larger context. This article provides a historical overview of the application of dialogue theory and methods, an analysis of the relationship between social constructionism and intergroup dialogue, and provides important directions for social workers who can utilize intergroup dialogue to promote social justice.     

Mixing Up the Goulash: Essential Ingredients in the “Art” of Social Group Work

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the connection between social group work and creativity. Parallels are drawn between the techniques and discipline of the creative artist and those of the social group worker. Four prominent themes of group work are discussed in relation to the work of the artist: empathy, accessibility to a range of emotions, maintaining a sense of humor, and full use of self within the group environment. Examples from a range of group populations are used to highlight the four identified “ingredients” in the art of social group work practice.     

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.     

反对文化冲突和恐怖战争:文化间对话的形式

哈贝马斯区分了交往中对实践理性的三种运用,其中包含着对实践理性的误解。文章通过对哈贝马斯理论的修改提出对文化间对话的三种主要类型:实用的—策略性的交往、道德的—普遍的商谈、伦理的—解释学的对话,再加上一种子类型:悲痛的对话或者辩论。这些对话类型为文化间对话提供了可能的样式。     

Group work is … powerful! This stuff changes … lives: training on group processes for facilitators of curriculum-based groups

ABSTRACT

This article describes a four-year group work training project conducted with facilitators of curriculum-based parenting groups who had not been trained in group work or group processes. A total 14 group facilitators and 144 group members from 34 groups were involved in the training and the mixed method evaluation. Participants described how the training modified their group facilitation, helping them understand that the groups themselves as well as the curricula were informative and transformative, and that group members as well as group facilitators had roles. Further, facilitators indicated that the training resulted in fundamental change in their self-perceptions from being simply purveyors of a parenting curriculum to empathic agents of change as well.     

Examining Engagement of Men in a Domestic Abuse Program from Three Perspectives: An Exploratory Multimethod Study

This study addresses the limited knowledge in the field on how men initially engage in domestic abuse treatment. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of the men (n = 8), all of the facilitators (n = 4), and an engagement instrument was completed by facilitators on the full sample (N = 95). Facilitator scores confirmed men's engagement in group and that it increased over time. A majority of men and facilitators identified “learning things” as most important in the engagement process. Key elements of group process men described included the importance of learning from each other's stories, and all facilitators observed the support exchanged between the men. Research and group work implications are discussed.     

浅论文化心理学研究中沟通平台的构建

文化心理学研究中存在＂不可通约＂,是因为研究者们囿于不同文化下的具体刺激所导致人们表现出的不同的心理与行为表现,而没有上升到刺激所具有的意义层面。而研究的＂可通约性＂有两个层次的含义,即：不同文化中具体刺激的、意义的、本质的、可对话交流的层面和表面的、可理解支持的层面。这为文化心理学研究中沟通平台的构建奠定了理论基础。     

文化对话与社会工作本土化

社会工作的产生和发展与特定的文化背景相联系,在中国发展社会工作一定要考虑中国的文化特点。但在这一过程中,我们也不应排斥外来文化和西方社会工作,而要在文化对话中,实现文化的交流和融合。中国在社会工作本土化的过程中,既要立足本土文化,也要吸收、借鉴西方的社会工作的优点和经验,最终形成具有中国特点的,适应中国本土文化的社会工作。     

Increasing Client Voice within Involuntary Groups

Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS) is a client-driven outcome management system that has been proven effective with engaging voluntary mental health client populations through several randomized clinical trials. Little is known, however, about PCOMS application to clients who are court ordered or pressured to attend group programs. This study (N = 10) interviewed group facilitators who use PCOMS with involuntary groups. Participants strongly endorsed the use of the instruments to increase client voice, respond supportively to client incongruence, and focus on client responsibility for change. Guidelines for application to involuntary groups and research and practice implications are discussed.     

Learning to Speak Out About Racism: Youths' Insights on Participation in an Intergroup Dialogues Program

This case study of an intergroup dialogue program explores youth engagement and learning about race in a group setting and includes a youth-led participatory program evaluation. The case study offers insights on the learning experience and context of youth engagement in community-based intergroup dialogues. Themes include (1) discussing race, (2) learning skills to communicate across different races, (3) grappling with privilege and oppression, and (4) developing leadership. Implications for social work practice with groups for community changes are discussed.     

Youth Participation and Community Change

The Bedouin community in the southern Negev desert in Israel is a population in transition. The article describes how deliberate intergroup dialogue enhanced the ability of a group of teachers from the community to discuss the complexities of the transition within a supportive group setting as a starting point to facilitate social change.     

Facts with feelings – social workers' experiences of sharing information across team and agency borders to safeguard children

This paper reports findings from a psychosocially informed case study of information sharing across team and agency borders, carried out in three children and family social work teams within one local authority. The study investigated practitioners' understanding and experiences of information sharing, the tasks, processes and technologies involved, as well as perceived barriers and facilitators. It also considered how the emotional and social dynamics of working contexts could impinge upon information work. Practitioners described information tasks relating to collecting, interpreting, communicating and recording information, guided by the demands of rigid organizational protocols. Performance of these tasks was, however, infused by the emotional complexities of child protection work, presenting a number of challenges for practitioners seeking robust and reliable information in the midst of ambiguity, complexity and heightened emotions. For practitioners across all teams, information work, and information itself, was both cognitive and affective and often at odds with linear processes for its exchange across team boundaries, designed to filter out all but hard evidence. Increased recognition of the dual nature (facts and feelings) of information and information work, throughout the safeguarding process, has potential to enhance the generation of shared understandings and collaborative practice across team and agency borders.     

Safety and Comfort,Content and Process: Facilitating Open Group Work with Men Who Batter

Based on the open group format of the McGill Domestic Violence Clinic this paper discusses four important concepts in treatment group work with men who batter: safety, comfort, content and process. This paper explores why men who batter might wish to avoid treatment groups as well as what might encourage them to attend these groups regularly. Interventive techniques such as "the comfort/discomfort level." "empathic projection," use of humor and the "process statement" are defined and highlighted by case examples. The paper concludes by suggesting what benefits the treatment group client takes with him when he moves on from the group.     

A Model for Implementing an Evidence-Based Practice in Student Fieldwork Placements: Barriers and Facilitators to the Use of “SBIRT”

ABSTRACT

This article reports on focus group data analysis that was used to understand initial, largely positive outcomes from a university-based initiative to disseminate and implement an evidence-based practice (EBP)—Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment for Substance Use (SBIRT)—into student fieldwork placements, which are usual care social work settings. Focus groups were conducted with three groups of stakeholders involved in the ongoing project: social work department faculty (n = 10), bachelor- and master-level social work students (n = 8), and social work fieldwork instructors (n = 6). Dimensional analysis of the focus group data yielded results indicating that dissemination and implementation of SBIRT was influenced by agency- and school-level factors and perceived fit between the EBP and individual professional identity, intrapersonal characteristics, and timing. The resulting model, developed through the focus group analysis, is offered and shows how these factors interacted and affected training, supervision, and use of the EBP. The model provides social work educational programs and agencies a working tool for diagnosing and proactively addressing barriers and breakdowns in the EBP implementation process. Future research that tests the model as a diagnostic tool and generates knowledge about its influence in developing competent evidence-based practitioners is indicated. Future focus groups in relation to this initiative are needed to better understand these barriers and facilitators in the EBP implementation process and their critical roles in the process of translating SBIRT into standard social work practice.     

Instilling the Soul of Group Work in Social Work Education

This article addresses the process of developing an educational model for teaching social work with groups in an undergraduate social work degree program in Israel. The model was developed against a backdrop of decreasing status of social group work within the profession and the consequent loss of its unique identity and power in the social work field. The model's aims are to provide the students with the basic principles of social group work, to ensure its place in their professional identity, and to awaken curiosity regarding its use in their future practice as social workers.     

Socratic Dialogue and Self-Directed Group Work: Strengthening Ethical Practice in Social Work

Socratic dialogue is a practical method of philosophical inquiry used to develop ethical and critical thinking among participants. On the other hand, self-directed group work is a practical intervention model based on social justice principles aimed at empowering service users and clients in social work and community work contexts. This conceptual article aims to reflect on a combination of the two models, arguing that group work interventions inspired by Socratic dialogue and self-directed group work may represent a way for social workers to develop a better ethical stance in their practice.     

Who owns the trauma? A Kleinian perspective on the dialogue between child protection social workers and the media

The present paper makes use of the developmental model of movement between mental positions that was formulated by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, aimed at understanding the dialogue that takes place between the media and social workers in the field of child welfare, centring around incidents of murder within the family. The basic concept in the paper is that when working with children who are victims of abuse and with their parents, and when reporting on them as well, the feeling of personal control is severely undermined, being associated with the loss of the hallowed social value known as ‘unconditional love of a parent for his child’. The paper illustrates these theoretical ideas by describing two cases that took place in Israel and recommendations are made regarding ways of promoting the dialogue between the professions.