Inside Group Work

A guide to reflective practice

Fiona McDermott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000257564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Prestazione di assistenza sanitaria

A valuable guide to working with groups for a variety of purposes in the human services. Its distinctive strength is the focus on 'thinking group' and on theory informed reflective practice. Grounded throughout in the rich experiences of 'group insiders', the book is both engaging and informative. Definitely a recommended resource for practitioners, students and educators. Ros Thorpe, Professor of Social Work and Community Welfare, James Cook UniversityGroup facilitation is a core skill for social workers, community workers, youth workers, health workers and psychologists. Inside Group Work offers a guide to group work theory and practice in a variety of human service settings.Drawing on thought-provoking contributions from experienced group leaders and participants, Fiona McDermott outlines the various ways in which group work can be used. Focusing particularly on psychoeducation groups, psychotherapy groups, mutual aid groups and social action groups, she explains that the purpose of the group should determine the form it takes.The key facilitation skills of listening, observing, intervening and responding under pressure are outlined. But McDermott argues these skills by themselves are not sufficient. Rather, facilitators need to 'think group' in order to be most effective.McDermott also explains the various stages groups go through, and looks at ways in which group facilitators can handle typical problems. She explores issues of power and leadership, and also the influence of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and age.

1
INTRODUCTION

A book about working with groups confronts us with a dilemma: can we really learn about something as dynamic and interactive as group work from the static medium of a book? Here is what a group participant and a group worker say:

You have to have done a bit (of group work) yourself to understand the process. I think it’s not something you could learn from a textbook or have someone tell you or take down notes at a lecture—I think you would have to have experienced [it] yourself in a personal way, not experienced it by sitting in and observing a group functioning but you being a participating member of a group. If you haven’t done that I don’t think you could effectively lead a group … because you just couldn’t understand what it was like for people who were in the group. (Bernard, a participant in a psychotherapy group)

If you want to work with groups—be in a few of them … find a group that is doing something that is of relevance to you and during the years you’re [studying], be in this group as well because you will learn far more from [a course in group work] if you have that experience. (Helen Lee, social action group leader and member)

These two comments pose a challenge: how can a book about group work practice compete with the powerful impact of personal experience in understanding and learning group work? While there is no substitute for actually gaining personal experience by participating in a group, it is equally difficult to avoid experience with groups—they are everywhere and there’s no escaping them! We are born into a group, grow up in one, are educated and socialised into groups, worship, work and play in groups, marry into groups, die as members of groups—some people even have sex in groups. So-called ‘reality TV’ with shows like Big Brother, Survivor, The Mole and Castaway 2000 play on our fascination with the ways groups work, with observing and empathising with the vicissitudes of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.

It can be quite surprising to count the number of groups we belong to, or that we acknowledge as significant to us in some way, to discover just how many there are. Although I do not consider myself to be a particularly ‘groupy’ kind of person, I calculate that there are at least twelve groups to which I currently belong. It is equally interesting and informative to list the groups which are anathema to us and with which we avoid forming any connections. And to further identify those groups which we do not formally belong to, but which we recognise as influencing us—for example, the World Health Organization—increases the number of groups impacting on our lives quite significantly. In fact, the very ubiquity of groups makes them almost invisible, like the air we breathe and the sounds we hear. Yet, just as air and sound are central to our existence, groups as a form of personal and social organisation play a vital and influential role (for good as well as ill) in affecting the course of our lives.

This book is intended to complement and build on what we already know from everyday life about groups, and in so doing to provide some assistance to beginning group workers who want to set up and lead or facilitate groups, as well as those who want to extend their knowledge and understanding of group work practice. It is intended as a guide to thinking about groups, about what we do in and with them. In order to make the best possible uses of groups, we need to understand what happens when a collection of individuals get together.

Why work with groups?

Social workers, psychologists, community workers, youth workers and other service providers in the human services field spend much of their time working with groups—as staff members, as colleagues—using groups as intervention strategies. While research findings on the effectiveness of group work are limited in scope and volume (see Rose and Feldman 1987;Tindale et al. 1998; Corey 2000), many of us believe that working collectively with colleagues, fellow service providers and service users can be extremely productive, helpful and enjoyable. However, it can also be a source of stress and tension. Some groups never gel, others are riddled with conflict, and some just fall away. But there are always other stories of groups that flourish and prosper, of groups and group members who achieve unexpectedly positive outcomes, and of groups that become rich sources of social capital and fully realised citizenship. Working with groups has been, and remains, a vital part of the practice of many human service professionals. Papell’s comments (1997, p. 11) with regard to the history of group work practice in social work capture well the experience of many human service professions. She notes that its history reflects ‘the essentials of the human condition—mutual aid and caritas, relationships, helping, sharing, play and work, social concern, collective action, empowerment, survival’.

In this book, our focus is on the work social workers, youth workers, community workers and other professionals do through the medium of group work in order to achieve outcomes that further the interests and needs of group participants. Group participants may be experiencing problems related to illness or disability, they may be the object of stigma or marginalisation such as those who experience psychiatric disability, or the conditions of their lives may have denied them opportunities for personal development and self-fulfillment. Other groups, such as community development and social action groups, form in order to bring about social or structural change (and sometimes to prevent change) through collective effort. Throughout this book, group workers and participants—the ‘insiders’—speak about their understanding of their work, the kind of group they facilitate or belong to, and the structures and processes which characterise their group. Their experience of collective work, and the structures and processes which facilitate this, contribute to our understanding of group work.

Working with groups, whether as group leader or organiser, or as group participant, provides opportunities to achieve outcomes that are frequently impossible or inappropriate to reach in any other way. While not all groups operate on completely democratic or collective premises, the potential to challenge the status quo within groups is often both possible and encouraged. The group comprises resources and strengths that no one individual can provide for him/herself. Indeed, the group can become something of a free market economy in which individuals may contribute and resource themselves and others in a reciprocal and mutually beneficial way.

Defining a group

In the process of counting the groups to which we belong (or which we avoid), or which we acknowledge as significant to us in some way, we have to define what a group is. There are several ways we might do this. We might identify the group as geographical—for example, made up of residents of the street we live in, or the country we reside in. Or we might identify the group as being made up of people with a shared interest—for example, a book discussion group. The group may be an institution such as a church or a school. It may comprise people with a shared political or social perspective, such as a disability rights group. It may be a work- or task-focused group such as a group within the organisation where we work or, for example, the secondhand clothing shop where we volunteer our services. Our definition may have a more subjective element to it such as when we see our friends as comprising a group to which we belong. Or it may be a group which contributes to our sense of identity, such as our family or an ethnic group.

The moment we try to define what precisely we mean by a group, we are in difficulty. Is it a case of numbers, or shared interests, or differences, or shared experiences or temporality? Is it all of these things or none of them? Are those we communicate with on the internet a group? Is a group a thing or an experience? How do we distinguish, for example, between a group and a football crowd, or a group and an audience at the opera, or a group and a gang? When girl gang members were asked by researchers to distinguish between their peer group and a gang, the majority could not do so. One young woman said: ‘[The gang] is like a second family. Because I don’t have my dad, I know my homeboys are there for me … and always will be ’cause that’s just the way it is.’ (Petersen 2000, p. 145) When the young women gang members were encouraged to elaborate, they did discuss the elements of violence and criminal activity which academics and researchers have included in their definition of what a gang is; however, left to themselves, a gang and a peer group were more or less synonymous to ‘insiders’.

Until we define a situation, it is very difficult to know how to act or ‘be’ in that situation. In order to do so, we need to accommodate, or ‘frame’ (Goffman 1974), a situation to be a particular kind of situation. Once we have framed it, we have invested it with meaning. By investing it with meaning, we are able to know how to act and what to do in that situation—what ways of thinking or acting are appropriate or inappropriate. So how we frame something makes a crucial difference to how we perceive, interpret and understand phenomena and experiences. In framing something as something, we are marking boundaries or imposing borders, indicating what is ‘inside’ and what is ‘outside’. However, simultaneously we are contextualising these experiences or phenomena because the frame we impose is an attempt to limit and define this perceptual field in relation to the context in which it is occurring. McLachlan and Reid (1994, p. 54) comment: ‘frames function both as part of the structure of what they enclose … and part of the “outside” world against which the enclosed text or activity is framed’. To frame an activity or an experience as a ‘group’ is to set up expectations about the kinds of things that might happen, the kind of attention or action that might be required of participants. Very importantly, it will affect what kinds of interpretations are made about ‘what is happening here’, ‘what it means’, and ‘how it came to mean this’.

Many people have defined groups. Shaw (1981, p. 454), for example, offers a somewhat minimal definition, proposing that a group is: ‘two or more people who are interacting with one another in such a manner that each person influences and is influenced by each person’. Forsyth (1999) samples the prevailing definitions of groups and notes what others in the field have identified as the central features of groups. These include:

• communication;
• influence;
• interaction and a sense of ‘we-ness’;
• interdependence;
• interrelations;
• psychological significance;
• shared identity;
• structure—the group as a social unit with status, roles, values and norms.

This suggests that groups are characterised by at least two persons, shared space and shared purpose. The interactions taking place amongst members may be important in the development of common goals, norms and roles, and some sense of belonging. Within the context of a group, participants find the possibility of making comparisons between themselves and others, which can become an influential source of control and reward for members. As such, groups may play a part in defining the individual’s sense of reality. While groups are extremely powerful phenomena, they also hold the possibility of learning how to share that power.

Each of these definitions has its usefulness and its limitations. Indeed, the moment we attempt to capture what a group is, we place a boundary around those elements which are in and hence comprise the group, and those which are out and thereby become part of the group’s boundary.

The notion of the group as a bounded social experience of some kind is useful in conveying the somewhat arbitrary nature of naming and framing whatever it is we call a group. Two further elements are important. Firstly, members of groups communicate in some way to one another. Secondly, the experience of being in a group needs to be acknowledged by participants both subjectively (a sense of belonging, however slight) and objectively (to something that exists in some kind of tangible form, recognisable to themselves and others). Indeed, the group can be thought of as exemplifying a particular mode of human interaction. Groups generate interaction that is different from, for example, one-to-one conversations. They thus create a different kind of experience and a different ‘level’ of being.

What are we studying when we study groups?

In the first instance, when we study human groups we are studying a central and primary part of the constitution of social reality. Here, within a variety of group or collective experiences, our sense of identity—of self, of social citizenship—is recognised and expressed.

We can also interpret the actions of people working collectively in many different ways, some of which may occur simultaneously. Groups exemplify:

• sets of interactions;
• sets of power relations;
• a particular kind of social and individual discourse that is different from that which occurs between one individual and another;
• a site where individuals’ desires and fears interplay as they react and respond to the threats and anxieties which the intimacy of a group conjures up;
• a site where there is interplay and struggle between various interpretations of social reality for legitimacy, acceptance and ascendancy;
• an aspect of social (actual) reality and of individual fantasy. The individual and other group participants interact and create a social experience both in the ‘here and now’ as well as in their own minds, in the fantasies and imaginings that infuse and colour their interpretations of what is happening;
• the individual meanings which people give to their intersubjective experience. Within the group context we can study the language and the metaphors people use to communicate and share their experiences with one another. It is a particular kind of discourse that becomes available for us to understand and enter, however partially, the social and experiential world of participants.

These ways of describing what is available for us to observe in groups only hint at the enormous variety and richness which may emerge out of collaborative work. It is the task of the group worker and group participants to maximise this potential.

Organisation of this book

This book emerged from two sources: my own practice as a group worker in a variety of settings, and my group work teaching with social work students. One of the principal challenges my practice and teaching experience generated was how to infuse the teaching of group work concepts and skills with the richness and complexity of ‘real life’ work with groups. Too often, group work teaching can become formulaic and banal, even with a modicum of experiential learning opportunities. My solution has been to turn to a number of group leaders and participants for help.

I began my research for this book by talking with group leaders and participants. Our conversations were wide-ranging and thought-provoking. From these conversations I have selected comments which illustrate many of the points made in the book with the ‘real life’ experience of those who know best what group work is all about. While the freshness and originality of many of these comments may not completely compensate for being in a group oneself, they do give us the opportunity to think about our experience with groups, how we might come to understand it and use it better.

The book begins (Chapter 2) by introducing the people to whom I spoke in preparing the text. They comprise a mix of group leaders and group participants working from a range of theoretical positions, with various types of groups and differing purposes for working collectively. This range is indicative of the variety of work in the field and the eclecticism of group work practice.

Chapter 3 provides a theoretical guide through this eclecticism. It is a key chapter in arguing that firm theoretical grounding for group work is essential in ensuring practice which is critical and reflective. Drawing on prevalent perspectives in the field, five vantage points for theorising group work practice are presented. Each of these perspectives proceeds from a central image or metaphor for what a group is—a power base, a system, a container of individuals, a container of properties, a site for meaning construction. Current theoretical debates, in particular the developments in critical postmodern theory, are explored in relation to the interconnections between these various theoretical perspectives.

The next three chapters address the complex issue of group leadership. The argument is made that leadership is a resource which all group participants contribute to and share in. Leadership refers to the possibility of influencing the way the group works. The power that is synonymous with leading a group emerges from the reciprocity of relationships in the group. Power itself is a resource rather than a given. It is expressed through the resources which all participants bring to the group. These resources comprise knowledge, experience, structural positioning, personal characteristics and capabilities. Rather than providing a list of abstract ‘leadership skills’, Chapter 5 explores the par ticular kind of capability that is indispensable to group leaders—that of ‘thinking group’. ‘Thinking group’ refers to the capacity to approach the group as a whole, with a mental and cognitive frame or schema for working that encompasses everything that happens within the group. In order to ‘think group’, workers and participants need to be receptive to the metaphors and images that are created in the collective encoun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Group purpose: ‘Why would you do it on your own?’
• 3 Theoretical basis of group work: ‘It’s more like growing plants than running a machine’
• 4 Leading: ‘A series of tasks anyone can do’
• 5 ‘Thinking group’: ‘It’s got a life of its own’
• 6 ‘Thinking group’ in action: ‘Dealing with the dynamics of a very emotional thing’
• 7 Forming a group: ‘The people in it create it’
• 8 The life of the group: ‘Laughter and tears’
• 9 Critical issues: ‘It’s a bit of a risk … you just don’t know what will happen’
• 10 Doing ‘good’ group work: ‘Outward looking and moving on’
• Epilogue
• References
• Index