Social work with groups

Social work with groups represents a broad domain of direct social work practice (Garvin, Gutierrez & Galinskey, 2004). Social workers work with a variety of groups in all settings in which social work is practiced. While some have proposed that social work practice with groups reflects any and all groups within which social workers participate, other definitional parameters have been established (Garvin et al., 2004). Middleman and Wood (1990) have proposed that for practice to qualify as social work with groups four conditions must be met: the worker should focus attention on helping the group members become a system of mutual aid; the group worker must understand the role of the group process itself as the primary force responsible for individual and collective change; the group worker seeks to enhance group autonomy; the group worker helps the group members experience their groupness upon termination (Middleman & Wood, 1990). Middleman and Wood (1990) observe that social group work meets their criteria of social work with groups. They also point out that "given our definition of work with groups, therapy can be the content and can be included also, contingent upon the way in which the group as a whole and groupness are used" in accord with the identified criteria (p. 11). As long as the criteria is met, structured group work "where the worker is the expert until her knowledge has been imparted to the group" could be regarded as social work with groups as well (Middleman & Wood, 1990, p. 11–12).

A common conceptualization of the small group drawn from the social work literature is as

"a social system consisting of two or more persons who stand in status and role relationships with one another and possessing a set of norms or values which regulate the attitudes and behaviors of the individual members in matters of consequence to the group. A group is a statement of relationship among person. Therefore, social systems have structure and some degree of stability, interaction, reciprocity, interdependence and group bond. Open social systems do not exist in a vacuum; they are part of and transact with… their surroundings…." (Klein, 1972, pp.125-126).

For Schwartz (1971), the group was most simply, "a collection of people who need each other in order to work on certain common tasks, in an agency hospitable to those tasks" (p. 7):)

Social group work and group psychotherapy have primarily developed along parallel paths. Where the roots of contemporary group psychotherapy are often traced to the group education classes of tuberculosis patients conducted by Joseph Pratt in 1906, the exact birth of social group work can not be easily identified (Kaiser, 1958; Schleidlinger, 2000; Wilson, 1976). Social group work approaches are rooted in the group activities of various social agencies that arose in the latter part of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. Social upheaval and new found demands as a result of post Civil War industrialization, migration and immigration created many individual and societal needs (Brown, 1991; Kaiser, 1958; Middleman, 1968; Reid, 1991; Schwartz, 1977; Wilson, 1976). Some of these needs were met through group work endeavors found in settlement houses as well as religious and charity organizations (Middleman, 1968; Wilson, 1976). Additionally group work could be found in the progressive education movement (Dewey, 1910), the play and recreation movement (Boyd, 1935), informal education, camping and youth service organizations invested in 'character building' (Alissi, 1980; Schwartz, 1977; Williamson, 1929; Wilson, 1976).

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