Working More Creatively with Groups

Jarlath Benson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429839474
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Teoria, pratica e riferimenti medici

In this classic text Jarlath Benson presents the basic and essential knowledge required to set up and work with a group. He looks at how to plan and lead a group successfully and how to intervene skilfully. As well as covering the different stages in the life of a group, the book emphasizes the various levels of group experience and gives suggestions for working more creatively with them.

For this new edition the author has added two new chapters reflecting how his own thinking and practice have developed since the book was first published. In the first he presents his new model for planning, setting up and working with reflective practice groups which are increasingly used in professional settings and agencies across the public sector and health care. In the second he considers why some groups fail and offers practical and helpful ideas and insights to guide agencies and groupworkers to think and plan more systemically, and provides a series of clinical vignettes that facilitates each of these contexts and perspectives.

There is also an expanded section on how to plan and conduct the sophisticated art of co-working and again a series of clinical vignettes that illustrate best practice.

Working More Creatively with Groups is well known to countless social workers, psychologists, teachers and community workers and many other professionals who utilize and employ groupwork in their practice. This new edition not only provides the basic guide to groupwork but also shows how to move on to more in-depth and intensive work.

Chapter 1

How to plan the group

The importance of planning cannot be emphasized enough – as our traditional folk wisdom shows. Foresight and organization are the basis of many of our favourite proverbs: ‘Look before you leap’, ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, ‘Prevention is better than cure’, and so on.

Yet despite the abundance and richness of these traditional insights many groups still fail to get off the ground or splutter into anonymity after a few sessions, due simply to the fact that not enough attention was given, before the group even started, to its planning and organization. There are many reasons for this. From time to time, I still come across the ‘It’ll be all right on the day’ types or the leaders who believe that planning the group is manipulative or will detract from the involvement of members. Even some who do conscientiously try to organize their thinking about their reasons and purposes for using groupwork, often generate goals and objectives for a group that are unrealistic or grandiose. Much of the conflict and hostility which can then ensue in those groups is simply a product of the leaders’ resentment and frustration with members who won’t seem to ‘work’, and members’ anger and confusion about the discrepancy between what they are capable of, or willing to do, and what is expected of them.

Before we go on to look at some procedures for planning the group let me say a bit more about why it is important to plan.

Why plan a group?

Whatever their ages, interests, or concerns, individual members come to the group with their own perception of what they want, or do not want from the experience. As the group develops, a common perception of need or interest emerges, which may or may not be compatible with the wants and desires of members (see page 65–66). At some point both individual and group perceptions of needs and goals will be tested against the worker’s perception of the group purpose.

As Whitaker says, if a worker is not clear in his mind about the sort of group he wishes to conduct, ‘he will almost inevitably present mixed cues and signals to the group’.¹ Douglas goes even further. A group leader has got to have a ‘reasonable certainty about what he intends to do’.² Particularly where a group leader is working with suspicious, disbelieving, or hostile clients, ‘if his own ideas and values are hazy then he will not be convincing’.³

But there are other reasons for planning a group:

• To assess the degree of need and plan a response
• To determine if groupwork is appropriate in the circumstances
• To clarify the purpose of the group
• To focus on members’ needs
• To identify specific outcomes
• To determine how these will be achieved. (A plan is the means employed to achieve particular ends or outcomes.)
• To help potential members see the group as a means of meeting their needs
• To pinpoint difficulties or obstacles and develop coping strategies
• To identify resources
• To clarify roles, expectations, tasks of workers and members

Clearly we could extend this list. The point is that leaders who start groups without being clear about their reasons for using groupwork, without adequate planning, or whose desired outcomes are vague are bound for trouble. In my introduction I said that my own style of groupwork was concerned with the ‘here and now’ of individual and group experience. This does not mean that I walk into a group without having considered why I am there, what I can or cannot offer, or without having done some preparation to help group members use a particular experience or activity to achieve an agreed objective.

My own experience is that the ability to work creatively and spontaneously in a group, and use the unexpected incidents that frequently occur, is based on a solid foundation of advance planning and consideration. In architecture there is a dictum, ‘Form follows function’, and this is good advice for group workers. We need to spend time identifying the function of the group in order to arrive at the most appropriate form for realizing our purposes.

A guide to planning

If Douglas is right that a group leader ought to have a ‘reasonable certainty about what he intends to do’ then we need to look at what activities the leader engages in to acquire this conviction. In the following sections I want to explore in some detail what I consider are the major planning activities of the group leader. My intention is not to suggest that planning a group is an operation which is absolute and definitive or precludes negotiation and agreement with members. The focus throughout is on the worker and what he can do before the first session to help the group become more effective. But first let us ask a question:

Is planning for an existent group different from planning for a group convened by the leader?

There are two ways in which a worker can engage with a group. Either she can convene the group herself or she can be invited or required to work with an already existing group.

If a leader works with an existent group she has not convened, the only difference this makes to the planning process is that:

• The group leader does not select group members. They are already selected
• She does not determine the goals or purposes of the group though she may help to clarify them
• She may have her role prescribed though she may be free within limits to perform it as she sees fit
• The programme may be prescribed although the group leader may have some control over content

With these constraints in mind I want to suggest a method which can apply to the planning of any group whether it already exists or has yet to be formed. There are six stages in this formulation:

• Researching and justifying the need for groupwork
• Attending to membership
• Programming the group
• Leading the group
• Presenting the group
• Planning the first session

The first three stages will be discussed now and the final three explored in the next chapter.

Researching and justifying the need for groupwork

There are a number of steps in this phase of planning.

Becoming aware of the need or problem

The first point to consider is how the demand for group service or membership comes to your attention. Is it a request from an already existing group for help with, let’s say, programme design; from a colleague who wants you to work with some of the children on his caseload because ‘you are good with kids’, or from a woman you know who is socially isolated and wants to join a group to make friends? Perhaps the provision of a group service is a requirement of your job. You may be expected to reach out to young people through groupwork or required to encourage and facilitate the work of community action groups or work with a diabetes group or post cancer group. Is the idea of groupwork a response on your part to emerging client needs or recognized themes in team, office, agency workload? Considering how the demand for groupwork comes to your attention is important because it raises some important points:

• Who makes the application?
• For whom?
• Why?
• What do they want?
• What do the beneficiaries of the group service actually need?

If you think for a moment you will realize that there are many people who did not originally request help but who are now receiving it and occasionally the demand for a group service represents more the needs of workers or an organization to maintain its grant aid or be seen to provide certain services than it does the real needs of potential group members. This is a recurring factor in why some groups just don’t work and will be explored more fully in Chapter 16.

In other circumstances people can ask for help with no real understanding of an agency’s services or obligations and then find themselves caught up in a programme they are unwilling to be involved in. The point is this, by carefully and thoughtfully assessing how and why you became aware of a particular demand for a group service you can:

• Begin to establish the motivations of yourself and colleagues to offer a service
• Decide that there really is a need that can be met by groupwork and which justifies time, resource, and expenditure
• Gather preliminary information about possible goals for a group
• Make it easier for people to participate in relevant programmes
• Highlight the range and functions of agency provisions and the consequences of involvement

Considering the proposal and testing alternatives

Having established that a social situation exists which might prove amenable to groupwork intervention, the next step is to consider if groupwork is in fact the desired or most appropriate response. Ask questions like:

• Is there a clearly demonstrable group need or problem?
• Does a shared need or problem exist among enough people to warrant groupwork?
• Can I identify a common aim which is likely to get agreement?
• Can groupwork really achieve gains for these potential members?
• What sort of gains?
• What special properties of the group do I wish to make use of?
• Are potential members likely to see the group as relevant and helpful?
• Will the group damage or label or stigmatize any member?
• Is there another medium or form of intervention that can achieve the desired outcome as well as the group?
• Why is the group setting more effective than the one-to-one setting?
• Can I make reasonable estimates of time involved, programme, cost?
• Can I get agency approval for the group in terms of use of time, finance, resource?

From the answers to these questions I try to establish that there is a need which is shared by people, is best met by working in a group, and that I can contribute in some way to this need. I find it useful to identify a general aim for the group such as:

• Providing social activity for isolated people
• Helping a community group clarify its goals
• Providing emotional support for depressed men and women

Having a general aim for the group focuses thinking and makes it easier to locate relevant literature or talk to other group leaders who have worked in this area, in order to obtain a better understanding of the needs of the group and learn about more effective and appropriate ways of working. However, aims are often stated in such general terms that it is not possible to evaluate whether they have been achieved or not. Subsequently I try to break aims down into narrower, more specific goals or objectiv...