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Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups
Final Project
Hazar Taha
Sow 222: Working with Groups
Dr. Shaghig Hudaverdian
May 16, 2021
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To start with, treatment groups involve members suffering from serious
emotional, behavioral and personal problems, where the group leader must help these
members deeply delve into their problems and then find ways and plan how to resolve these
problems. For this reason, the leader must have good counseling and leadership skills. An
example of treatment groups would be treating substance use disorders, and the importance
of these types of groups when it comes to substance use is that members will understand that
they are not alone in the recovery process and that the group will address symptoms that
usually accompany substance use like depression and isolation.
A second type of groups is support groups, which involve members to meet up
and talk and inform each other on a common issue they are all facing where they help
each other and themselves overcome it. Their meetings are usually led by a professional
group leader, and the issues being resolves range from chronic illnesses, to personal
growth, to personal problems, and to psychological problems. An example of a support
group could be a group of cancer patients who share their own stories with this illness
and how each one of them dealt with it.
Another type of groups, which is called psychoeducational groups, aim to educate
and give insight on managing certain psychiatric problems, in which they focus on
specific diagnoses, depression, anxiety, ADHD, etc. An example of psychoeducational
groups is stress management, where the leader focuses on educating members identify
stressors and on different ways to deal with these stressors.
Task groups, another type of groups, focus on attaining a certain goal and
finishing a certain task. An example of a task group could be a committee in a certain
organization that plan ways to finish particular tasks or goals that the organization has
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set.
A fifth type of groups is community-action groups, which emphasizes improving
the community and centers around a variety of activities that usually involves a great deal
of members’ engagement when it comes to planning designing, and implementing local
services no matter what the objectives of the group are. An example would be making a
campaign to raise enough funding to help certain children get treated for a chronic illness.
2.
a. What is meant by group processes is the establishment, development and
growth of the group and the way members work and interact with each other in order to
achieve their common group goals and objectives. For example, members might have
different roles distributed among them, or communicate with each other each of their needs
or issues and share different way on how each one of them deals with that type of issues.
b. For the purposes of the group to be accomplished effectively, members must
first be committed to the group goals, must have good communication and listening
skills, and be cooperative rather than competitive.
3. a. Group change naturally takes place with time. In the beginning stages, which was
seen in the models of group development, members are nervous and still don’t trust the group. In
the middle stages, they go through some conflicts regarding power and control, until they reach
intimacy where they act like family. At the end stage, they feel hesitant about laving the group.
Thus, members drastically develop from the beginning till the end stages, where at first, they are
hesitant to trust the group and at the end, they don’t want to leave.
b. Just like the members’ behavior changes with the development of the group, leaders do
too. At first, leaders’ main role is to make the members feel welcomed and that they belong.
Then they have to be emotionally supportive and informative about the nature of power and
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control, and then they just act as supporters to the members, and then at the end, they guide the
members through the process of termination.
4. a. If a social worker feels like there is a member who isn’t engaging enough in the
group or isn’t given the chance to participate and be heard, he/she could notice in the discussion
the member’s body language, like what seemed to trigger something in them for example, and
then ask them about it or about their experience with the particular topic being discussed. The
leader could also ask the other members to actively listen and give him/her the chance to speak,
so that maybe all of the others could reflect on what the member is saying.
b. When a social worker tries hard to make sure that all of the group members are
participating and getting the chance to be heard, the social worker is probably using a democratic
leadership style. A democratic leadership style depends on the discussions and opinion of all the
members, even when important decisions are being made, which helps create a comfortable
trusting group atmosphere.
5. The “person-in-environment” view is best explained by the ecological model. This
model claims that a person is influenced by both internal and external forces, and that people
interact with a lot of systems in their life, like family system, educational system, etc. Thus,
social workers must focus on the person’s development, on the relationship between the person
and the systems in the environment he/she interacts with, and on the systems in order for them to
meet people’s needs.
6. a. When group goals are heterogeneous with personal goals, members will not be that
attracted to the group in the first place, they will be demotivated to work on the group goals, and
they won’t be as happy and cooperative with the other members.
b. To start with, the group must first set the group goals and then the tasks necessary for
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achieving these goals. The group must then distribute relevantly the group roles and set
deadlines, and then keep on evaluating whether tasks are being achieved in the required
deadlines and the extent to which they are being met. Finally, the group must evaluate how much
they have met the goals they have originally set, where the more goals have been set, the more
successful and effective the group is considered.
In addition to that, the commitment and motivation of the members affect how much the
members will achieve of these goals. Members will be more committed when they are attracted
to the group in general and then to the goals being set, the efficacy of the group when it comes to
achieving the goals, how measurable the tasks and goals are, the rewards members will get after
attaining the goals, whether the goal is low, moderately, or highly competitive, and the members’
communication within each other. In addition to that their motivation is very much influenced by
whether the group goals are similar to their personal goals, whether the members understand the
significance of these goals, and how committed they are to achieving these goals.
7. According to the Garland, Jones, and Kolodny Model of group development, there are
five stages of social work group development.
The first stage is the Preaffiliation, which involves the member’s nervousness in
belonging and trusting the group, and the leader trying to create a comfortable atmosphere. This
stage is very important because it either attracts the members and motivates them to try and
engage in the process or demotivates them from even attending other meetings and making an
effort.
The second stage is the Power and Control stage, where members first become involved
in the group and conflicts of power arise in which everyone wants to be in control. The leader
here must explain to them the nature of power, must emotionally support them, and set certain
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norms that calm solve such conflicts. Thus, the leader must help them trust him/her, which is
very crucial to group development because once the members trust the leader, they will commit
to the group.
The third stage, intimacy, is when group cohesiveness is built and the members build
family like relationship with each other. The importance of this stage is the fact that they can
now express themselves freely and be able to focus on their personal growth and problems.
The fourth stage, differentiation, is a very smooth stage where members are trying
alternative behaviors, power conflicts are at a minimum and the leader’s job is just to support the
members.
The final stage is separation, where members have achieved all of the group goals but are
reluctant on leaving. The social worker here must guide and support them in this process for their
separation to be healthy.
8. The term “roles” in the context of social work group means the responsibilities
distributed among the members and the group leader and the significance of each member in
achieving the group goals. For example, a member might take the role of an information seeker
and the leader might take the role of an empowerer.
The term “norms” means the traditions and rules that are set for the group which help
regulate the group processes. For example, as time goes on in the group, members might learn to
actively listen to whoever is speaking and not interrupt them. Another example would be that a
in a certain group, phones must be turned off so that the members can focus on the meeting.
Finally, the term “communications” means the interactions and understanding of the
members and the leader among each other. For example, members could communicate indirectly
through eye contact and body language. Another example is through the free expression of one’s
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emotions, feelings and experiences.
9. A social worker could involve members in the evaluation process in a few ways.
He/she could ask them orally to give feedback and criticism. He/she could also give them a
survey or a questionnaire about their feedback and criticism about what helped them in their
process of change and their setbacks too. Both the positive and negative feedback are crucial for
the leader so that he/she would know what techniques to increase and mistakes he/she needs to
stop doing in future groups.
10. There are 3 criteria for selecting members in the group. First, the selection process
must be based on who benefits most from the group process. Second, the leader must focus on
descriptive factors, like age, sex, gender, etc., where for example, the age span between members
should be small. Third, the leader must also focus on behavioral factors, where members could
be selected for having some personal traits that improve the group process.
11. Prior to developing a group, there are 4 stages that need to be achieved that
affect the group process.
First comes determination of group objectives which will help gain effective
members.
Next comes determining the size of the group which differs based on the
objectives on the groups where having a lot of members is preferable in groups that need
to solve complex problems but a small number of members is better in groups that
include a lot of discussions and interaction between all members.
Third, the leader must determine whether the group needs to be open-ended,
where new members can come into the group at any stage that could be beneficial when it
comes to new members bringing in new ideas and views, or closed-ended where
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members are consistent which is beneficial when it comes to maintaining the same
trusting atmosphere.
Finally, the last stage is setting the duration when it comes to how many sessions
will it take and the duration of each session in addition to the number of days between
meetings, which varies based on the issues being tackled and conflicts the group might be
facing. In fact, the optimal duration for productivity and active engagement is 2 to 3
hours once or twice per week. Meeting for less than 2 hours isn’t enough to cover the
required tasks and activities and more than 4 hours will lead members to get drowsy and
frustrated. Moreover, it is preferable to leave around 4 days between meetings to allow
members to reflect on previous sessions.
12. For group cohesion to be met in a group, the climate of the group must give
the members feelings of belonging, the members must feel involved in the decisionmaking process and their views must be respected, members must be rewarded for
accomplishing tasks in order to create a cooperative environment instead of a competitive
one, and members must be able to trust each other.
13. There are some factors that could get in the way of group communication
processes.
To start with, perception might interfere with communication by the way
members decode or interpret information, where they can either add information to what
the sender is telling them which leads to misinterpretation, or they might not comprehend
what is being said to them.
In fact, the perceptual process might affect communication based on the importance of
the information to the sender at the time the message was being received, the motive of
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the receiver which selects what information to process, and the information will be
organized in a way that is meaningful to the receiver.
Physiological factors could also influence perception based on how the person
experiences them, like taste, smell, temperature, hearing, and vision in addition to
additional physiological factors.
In addition to that, sociocultural factors can affect the communication process.
For example, defense mechanisms, which are unconscious psychological processes, are
activated when faced with conflicting situations or information where the person will
attempt to avoid such painful circumstances. Another example is communication that
brings out defensiveness from within the receiver. A third and fourth example would be
the attitudes and beliefs that the receiver fosters, and stereotypes the receiver must have
about the sender.
The second factor that interferes with communication is self-disclosure, which is
the way a person expresses him/herself. For example, someone might not fully express
him/herself which means that not enough information is given to the receiver, or someone
overexpresses him/herself which could also lead to misunderstandings.
14. a. When it comes to the process evaluation, members are asked orally about
their feed back for the group process, for example whether certain techniques that were
used were effective or counterproductive.
Members are also given a questionnaire that they need to fill. The questionnaire
would include three questions: advantages of the group, shortcomings of the group, and
suggestions for any changes.
A third way in which process evaluation is done is through peer-review, in which
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the leaders’ peers could come sit in in some session or have recorded session sent to
them, so that they can give the leader feedback.
b. When it comes to outcome evaluation, one way to do it is through singlesubject design, where the leader must do a couple of steps: specifying the outcome,
selecting a relevant measure, recording baseline data, implementing intervention and
recording the outcome, assessing the change, and inferring how effective the intervention
was.
Another way to do outcome evaluation is through task achievement, where
members and the leader are each assigned specific tasks to be accomplished at a set
deadline, and at the end, they will assess how much of the tasks were accomplished at the
set time.
A third way to do outcome evaluation is through satisfaction questionnaires,
which measure the satisfaction of the members at the last session.
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