social work programme

Social Work with and within Groups

Introduction

This unit is preparatory. It lays the groundwork for the rest of this six-unit module on Working With and Within Groups. It deals with general aspects of how groups are formed, structured and function. It covers difference approaches to understanding groups and different ways of working with and within groups.

Throughout this unit, as in the rest of the module, we shall often use the term ‘worker’ to describe the different professional workers, including social workers, and ‘persons’ or ‘people’ to describe the clients or users of services.
 

Unit Objectives

After completing this unit you will be able to:

• explore what group work is
   

• examine group processes
   

• be familiar with different approaches to group work
   

• know how to facilitate a group
   

• work effectively with one type of group.

Session 1
I can:	Not at all Partly Quite well Very well
define what a group is
identify different types of groups
describe group structures
Session 2
I can:
identify the different groups to which I belong
describe my own experience of being a member of a group
specify what appropriate participation in a group involves
evaluate my experience of being a member of a group
Session 3
I can:
define the term 'process' as applied to groups
describe what group processes are
explain how groups go through different phases
identify the implications of these different phases for work with groups
Session 4
I can:
describe some key principles of group work
enable group members to negotiate some principles of group work
identify some of the difficulties of putting the principles into action
Session 5
I can:
identify some factors I need to consider when joining a group
explain the different phases of group work
explain the different approaches a worker can take in group work
Session 6
I can:
identify the aims of work with groups
explain the processes involved in work with a group
identify the skills involved in work with a group
evaluate my work with a group

You now have a picture of your current position in relation to the topics in this unit. The profile is repeated at the end of the unit as a Learning Review, and you can check your progress by repeating it again then.

The more fully you have already covered a topic the less time you need to allocate here to the text that covers it. You should, nevertheless, refer to the relevant section as a brief revision exercise, even for those outcomes you have rated as fully achieved.
 

Session One
Understanding Group Work

• define what a group is
   

• identify different types of groups
   

• describe group structures.

Introduction

This session deals with why and how people come together in groups. It is crucial to approach group work with a critical appreciation of different ways of viewing groups.

The impact of groups on people can be great, which is one of the reasons why work with people depends so largely on work in groups. What happens in groups can have a powerful influence on you, for good or ill. Unless you can develop a critical appreciation of group processes you will be in danger of becoming overwhelmed by your group experiences.

You may wonder why this module has the title Working with and within Groups. Why not call it simply group work? The reason is that we want to emphasise that your work may be either outside or inside groups, as an external facilitator or as a member. In fact, you may switch from one to another of these positions during your work. You are also likely to have many different kinds of contact with groups. In some groups – for example, team meetings – you will be a participant. In other groups you may be a leader or facilitator. With yet other groups you may be an external adviser.

Different types of groups

There are many different kinds of groups, probably almost as many as there are people categorising them.

Activity 1

See how many different types of groups you can identify. Don’t limit yourself to groups to which you belong.

We have started off the list for you.

training course

therapy group

club.

Now you continue ...
 

Comment

Once you got started, you perhaps couldn’t stop thinking of different types of groups. Many that you wrote down at first may have fallen into the same category and you may have had to start crossing some off your list. Here are some categories of which you may have thought – but bear in mind there is no one correct way of categorising the different types of groups.

teams
crowds
work groups
hobby groups
family groups
political groups
church groups
leisure groups
education groups
common interest groups
friendship groups
clubs
societies

What is a group?

The word ‘group’ is likely to mean different things to different people. We may be clear that one person sitting alone in a room is not a group at that moment, but as people join them, at what point are we likely to say ‘now it’s become a group?’

It is hard to say what distinguishes a group from, say, any random collection of people. Take a cluster of people who get on a train at a particular station on a very frosty morning and join two passengers already sitting in a compartment. Ask yourself at what point this collection of people, coming together by chance, may become a group.

Let’s suppose the train grinds to a halt before the next station. There is no heating on in the carriage and there is ice on the window. The senior conductor comes into the compartment and announces that the engine has a fault which will take an hour to repair. The passengers have been silent for half an hour, but now one or two make remarks. After 15 minutes they are engaged in lively reminiscences about their experiences of being delayed on train journeys. After 30 minutes, they have started to draft a letter of complaint to British Rail. After 45 minutes, some members who disagree with the way the letter is expressed are arguing for a different approach to the problem. One of them makes as though to leave the compartment. At that moment the train starts to move and all the passengers in the compartment begin to pool their sandwiches and flasks and to share a picnic together.

Activity 2

Think about this group of people in the train. Spend a few minutes writing down no more than six features of the group which make it a group. Make sure each of them is what you regard as an essential element for the group to exist.

Here is a thought to get you going. There were two people in the compartment already. Was this enough to form a group? What is the minimum number of people required to form a group? Perhaps you should make this minimum number the first of the features on your list.
 

Comment

At first you may have thought that it is obvious what a group is, but as you thought about it you may have become more and more unsure. Our brainstorm produced the following features of a group.

1. a minimum number of people (we suggest three)
    

2. these people gather together at particular times, to spend time together
    

3. they have at least a minimum level of interaction between each other
    

4. they have something in common.

There have been many similar attempts to define what a group is but complete agreement has never been achieved. But it is important that you know that it is not easy to define what a group is.

Activity 3

Consider this situation. There are four people waiting in the GP’s waiting room. Every now and then they talk to each other about the weather and other everyday things. Would you regard these four people as being a group? Does this gathering of people have enough of the features we identified above?

Comment

You probably said that the four are not a group. Yet they have the four conditions.

• There are three or more people.
   

• The four people are certainly in the same room together, but whether this amounts to spending time together is open to question. Spending time together suggests to us that people come together for the purpose of meeting together. Each of the four people concerned came to her or his GP, not to meet with other people in the waiting room.
   

• There is certainly a minimum level of interaction between the four people.
   

• The people have something in common. They are waiting to see their GP.

So three of the four features are met in this example and the fourth is open to dispute. Yet the four people in the waiting room wouldn’t usually be regarded as a group. Two additional features are missing. One has to do with the difference between the experience of being four individuals in a room and the experience of being a member of a group. Over a period of time a group identity develops. The second is the stages of development through which groups tend to go. You could say that the four people in the waiting room potentially form a group, but only potentially. You can imagine the admittedly remote possibility of the four of them getting on so well that they decide to meet again. If this happened, most of us would say they are now a group.

So let’s add two more features to the list. Here is the full list with new features (5) and (6).

1. There is a minimum number of people (we suggest three).
    

2. These people gather together at particular times, to spend time together.
    

3. They have at least a minimum level of interaction with each other.
    

4. They have something in common.
    

5. The gathering goes through identifiable stages of development.
    

6. The quality of the group experience exists over and above the total of experiences of individual people in the group.

The first three items on our list are less likely to be disputed than the second three, which we admit are more a matter of opinion among commentators on groups. As a concise working definition of a group, we suggest that a group exists when more than two people come together and define themselves as a group. This recognises that the existence of a group often centres around the fact that its members view it as a group, and other people recognise it as a group.

• in sociology, especially into crowds and riots
   

• in psychology, especially into the relationship between individual personality and performance in groups
   

• in social psychology, especially into interaction between people in groups and the powerful effects of group influences on group members.