Hispanics and Group Work

This article reviews the literature on group work with Hispanics and highlights key practice issues and considerations. A total of 28 publications are analyzed with reference to such elements as group member and leader characteristics and possible facilitating factors.     

Early Cultural Dialogues in Cross-Cultural Clinical Practice

This article examines the quality of cultural dialogues between clients and therapists when they initiate and integrate verbal references to culture in the beginning process of therapy. Six cross-cultural dyads in short-term–oriented community mental health services participated in the study. The initial three sessions of actual clinical encounters were taped, and conversation analysis was used for an intensive analysis of the treatment sessions. Despite the presence of a wide range of affectively charged cultural content raised by the clients, the therapists showed only minimal responses to these topics. The potential of therapeutically germane cultural dialogue was lost, and the discussion of material involving cultural differences regressed to monologues expressed by clients. In this sample, there was little talk that focused on cultural differences or similarities between clients and therapists. Implications and limitations of the study in cross-cultural clinical practice are discussed.     

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.     

Evaluating Group Work within a Summer Camp Intervention for Children and Adolescents with Asthma

Findings suggest that residential camps and group work within camps are highly valued by children and their parents. Children predominantly valued recreational and educational aspects of camp programming whereas parents emphasized appreciation for the safety that a condition-specific camp can offer a child with illness. Within the camp program, group work and peer support were integrally provided along with clinical monitoring and health teaching. A psychoeducational approach was implemented in which group participants engaged in sessions addressing self-care strategies and constructive ways to integrate childhood asthma in daily life. Participants identified the residential camp setting as a promising environment for group work among children and adolescents with asthma. Implications and recommendations are discussed.     

The Use of IASWG Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups in Supervision of Group Work Practitioners

This article describes a model for supervision for practicing group leaders. The content and process of the model is participant driven, with the International Association for Social Work with Groups Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups used as a core element to guide development of the model as well as the support offered by the supervisor and participants.     

The BSW Social Work Curriculum: Teaching Strategies,Case Material,and Assignments for Teaching Group Work

This article is a companion piece to another article appearing in this special edition of Social Work with Groups on group work content for the generalist practice curriculum. In this article, techniques that assist the instructor in presenting the material on group work in the classroom are identified. These techniques, which include case material and classroom exercises, also help students connect their field and classroom learning about group work. The activities discussed in this article derive from the core group work content discussed in the previous article.     

The Faculty Meeting: Practicing Social Justice-Oriented Group Work

Social group work scholars and practitioners have begun to locate and recognize important sites for thinking about and practicing social group work as increasing evidence demonstrates its diminishing importance. This article identifies faculty meetings as a significant site for integrating social group work more fully into departments and schools of social work and helping to achieve the profession's social justice mission. Challenging the meaning of the faculty meeting and thinking of it as a faculty group is a necessary prerequisite to realize this goal. A set of principles is presented and next steps explored to reclaim and reinsert the value of social group work for the profession today.     

A Narrative Approach to Group Work with Men Who Batter

A narrative approach to group work with men who batter is presented with case examples. The approach is based in feminist and constructionist theory and seeks to expose and undermine the effects of patriarchal discourse in the lives and relationships of group members. The approach emphasizes an understanding of gender discourse, taking responsibility for actions, and exploring new definitional possibilities for participants and their relationships. The techniques of radical listening, the principle of least contest, breaking the allure of male entitlement and its effects, and cocreating a new male way of being are discussed with case examples.     

Use of Groups in School Social Work: Group Work and Group Processes

ABSTRACT

A survey of 54 school social workers indicated that they use group work extensively in their practice to address a number of student issues. Cognitive-behavioral theories were most commonly used to guide these groups. Workers rarely identified the use of small group theory as a conceptual framework. Groups were less frequent at the secondary level, and sessions were longer. Family change groups were more common at the elementary level. The method of funding the social work position had no effect on kinds or numbers of groups school social workers facilitated. Respondents did not identify use of small group theory as a conceptual framework, but they addressed group dynamics and group developmental stages. They used activities extensively and adapted published curriculum to meet member needs.     

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.     

Gatekeepers,Gatecrashers, and Gateways in Group Work with Kids: A Mystery Story

This article is framed as a group work mystery story and presents obstacles and opportunities for working with children and adolescents in groups. The reader is left guessing about how a student intern can overcome what she experiences as an unsympathetic supervisor who is thwarting her attempts to form an activity group composed of teenaged moms. The article interweaves group work concepts and additional practice illustrations around the unfolding mystery. The concept of teaching-on-the-go is issued as challenge for all group workers that wish to be itinerant educators and missionaries for the method.     

Adventure-Based Group Therapy to Promote Social Skills in Adolescents

This article presents adventure-based group therapy as one type of activity-based group treatment that can be used to promote social skills in adolescents. Adventure-based therapy groups are a blend of experiential education, outdoor education, and group therapy. Key components of adventure-based therapy groups include activities that provide immediate and concrete consequences of behaviors, reliance on problem solving, their use of novel and unfamiliar environments, and the use of physical trust. The article includes practice examples of how these factors can be used to promote social skills and discusses limitations and implications for social work group practice.     

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 Impact of Self-Esteem Group Work Practice with Rural Elementary Male Students

The present pilot study examines the effect of a social work self-esteem group as a method for improving the self-esteem and classroom behavior of disruptive male students in an elementary school in rural Georgia. Teachers, educators, and administrators in school systems across the nation are continuously bombarded with a disproportionate number of students who fail to display acceptable standards for appropriate classroom behavior, particularly male students. Research efforts have been directed toward identifying effective social work practice interventions that will bring about meaningful proactive changes to elementary student populations who exhibit such behaviors. A validated outcome measure was included in an uncontrolled pretest–posttest design to determine quantifiable changes. Findings from this study show that after the social work group intervention, posttest scores tended to be lower than pretest scores, which would indicate that there was a notable improvement in elementary students’ self-esteem and class behavior between pretest and posttest assessments. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

A Definition of Social Work for Practice

Australian and international discussions of the broad mission of social work, of its underlying premise that the personal is political, that it is responsive and able to take a leadership role from a clear value base, are sophisticated debates that demonstrate the vitality, dynamism, and enthusiasm of a profession cognizant of changes and challenges occurring outside it. However such developments and considerations are possibly most meaningful for those social workers who are either very clear about what social work is or who are not daily confronted with challenges to explain or account for their profession in performance-driven agency contexts. This article proposes a simple definition of social work which, while cognizant of the theoretical developments occurring both in and outside the profession, presents the profession in a way that clearly articulates what it is that social workers do.     

Mutual Aid: A Contribution to Best-Practice Social Work

This keynote speech, delivered in French and translated to English with minor adjustments for publication, presents some of the author's ideas about mutual-aid practice as best-practice social work. The author discusses the etiology and centrality of mutual aid in social work with groups, presents five characteristics of mutual-aid practice that reflect best-practice social work and identifies four key characteristics—joy in sharing, faith, courage, and curiosity—of mutual-aid practitioners. Similarities between mutual-aid practice and evidence-based group work, practice evaluation and participatory-action research are discussed as well. The author presents group work as inherently evidence based and challenges the idea that subjective measures alone may not be valid in reaching this determination.     

Group Work Camp as Nondeliberative Process

ABSTRACT

The article seeks to identify examples of several features of nondeliberative practice within the process of Group Work Camp, an experiential training program. Camp provides an alternative environment for learning, in which novice group workers can effectively deal with their anxiety about facilitating groups. Examples of specific features of nondeliberative process are identified, including “worker of the self” nondeliberative and deliberative process working in tandem, problem solving without awareness of a problem, casting the problem in manageable form, transforming nondeliberative experience into analog, shifting from artful to actional to analogic forms, and worker role.