SWRK 110

• Group work is an orderly systematic, planned way of working with people in groups.
• Group work is a process and a method through which individuals in a group are helped by a worker to relate themselves to other people and to experience growth opportunities in consonance with their needs and capacities.
• Emma Robarts was a British Christian activist who formed a group known as the Prayer Union.
• Special Interest Advocate presents own viewpoint and requirements.
• Self-Confessor talks about the topics that are important to self and not the group.
• Role Perception is an individual’s view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given situation.
• Role Expectations are how others believe a person should act in a given situation.
• Psychological Contract is an unwritten agreement that sets out what others expects from a group member and vise versa.
• The roots of group work began in the settlement houses, the YMCA, YWCA, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and Jewish Centers of the 1800s.
• Early group services came from recreation, informal education, friendship and social action.
• Toynbee Hall, the first settlement house established in London in 1884, was followed by many others in large cities in the USA.
• Many of the early settlement house workers were daughters of ministers; usually from middle and upper class families.
• Early settlement houses sought to improve housing, health and living conditions, find jobs for workers, teaching English, hygiene and occupational skills and improve living conditions through neighborhood cooperative efforts.
• The techniques used in settlement houses to effect change are now called social group work, social action and community organization.
• Formal or formed groups are secondary groups such as classmates assigned to a group project or parents appointed in a school organization.
• Task groups are usually organized to accomplish specific tasks or activities that benefit a larger group like a neighborhood, community, or organization.
• Treatment groups are organized to meet people’s emotional and social needs.
• Consciousness-raising groups are time-limited groups that help members share their experiences and explore their feelings about oppressed status.
• Treatment groups attempt to modify dysfunctional behaviors, thinking, and feelings.
• Social action groups are directed to bringing changes in the larger environment to reduce oppression.
• Network and support groups can assist members in reducing feelings of social isolation and recognizing their strengths by helping members to connect with others in similar situations to provide mutual support and to seek resources.
• Skill groups have as goals such as development of members’ empowerment skills.
• Group structure is the existence of understandable group order and the regularities characterizing the behavior of all forms of organization.
• Roles are expectations about what is appropriate behavior for persons in particular positions.
• Task roles help the group to select, define, and solve problems.
• Coordinator links statements made by one group member to another.
• Energizer provokes group to take action.
• Elaborator extends upon another’s ideas.
• Evaluator-critic evaluates the group’s work against higher standards.
• Information-giver gives helpful information.
• Information-seeker questions for clarification.
• Building and maintenance roles help the group to function as a group, each one helps strengthen and support the group.
• Personal or self-centered roles are directed towards satisfying individual’s needs without regard for the needs and concern of the group.
• Aggressor acts aggressively towards other group members and their ideas.
• Dominator dominates group speaking time.
• Blocker-refuses to collaborate with other’s ideas.
• Loafer refrains from work.
• Emphasized “environmental reforms”.
• Continued to teach the poor the prevailing middle-class values of work, thrift and abstinence as the keys to success.
• Played important roles in drafting legislation and organizing to influence social policy and legislation.