Group Work (Haworth Social Work Practice,)

Group Work: Skills and Strategies for Effective Interventions, Second Edition examines eclectic approaches to group work and discusses ways to help practitioners offer more successful services to clients. This edition includes new material on complicated value dilemmas and specific techniques in confrontation and in humor in groups. Complete with more games and exercises for group sessions, this enlightening book also contains excerpts and discussions of case studies that will serve as a valuable reference that may be applied to your own experiences. Group Work will help you provide improved services to clients as it discusses effective suggestions and strategies, such as:

• gaining an understanding of “self,” or the process by which you identify internal responses to external stimuli created by the group
  
• unlocking the underlying meanings, themes, and needs of a group by examining transference and countertransference issues
  
• establishing guidelines, structures, and goals and purposes for groups and defining your role in achieving these standards
  
• helping you identify and work through feelings of boredom, helplessness, sadness, and anger, which are potential barriers to the work of the group
  
• helping the group translate nonverbal expressions of similar feelings as they manifest themselves in certain group behaviors, including absence and lateness, lethargy in communication, and acting out
  
• ending groups properly to ensure progress is maintained and separation is not damaging