A Mutual-Aid Model for Social Work with Groups

Dominique Moyse Steinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134473083
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Gesundheitsversorgung

Group work is a popular and widely used social work method. Focusing particularly on the central role of mutual aid in effective group work, this text presents the theoretical base, outlines core principles, and introduces the skills for translating those theories and principles into practice.

A Mutual-Aid Model for Social Work with Groups will help readers to catalyze the strengths of group members such that they become better problem solvers in all areas of life from the playroom to the boardroom. Increased coverage of evaluation and evidence-based practice speaks to the field's growing concern with monitoring process and assessing progress. The book also includes:

• worker-based obstacles to mutual aid, their impact, and their antidotes
• pre-group planning including new discussion on curriculum groups
• group building by prioritizing certain goals and norms in the new group
• the significance of time and place on mutual aid and the role of the group worker
• maintaining mutual aid during so-called individual problem solving
• an expanded discussion of anti-oppression and anti-oppressive practice
• unlocking a group's potential to make difference and conflict useful
• special considerations in working with time-limited, open-ended, and very large groups.

Case examples are used throughout to help bridge the gap between theory and practice, and exercises for class or field, help learners to immediately apply conceptual material to their practice. All resources required to carry out the exercises are contained in over 20 appendices at the end of the book. Key points at the end of each chapter recap the major concepts presented, and a roster of recommended reading for each chapter points the reader to further resources on each topic.

Designed to support ethical and successful practice, this textbook is an essential addition to the library of any social work student or human service practitioner working with groups.

1

THE MUTUAL-AID MODEL OF SOCIAL WORK WITH GROUPS

In This Chapter

Mutual Aid: Roots and Raison d’être

Mutual Aid Defined and Described

Mutual Aid and Communication

The Mutual-Aid Climate

The Need for Common Cause

The Mutual-Aid Mindset

The Primary Functions of Mutual-Aid Practice

Harnessing Strengths

Group Building

Teaching Purposeful Use of Self

The Notion of Group-Specific Skillful Practice

Key Group Values, Norms, and Dynamics Compared

Key Concepts of This Chapter

Common Cause/Group Purpose

Communication

Dual Focus

Group Building

Group Climate

Group-Specific Skillful Practice

Harnessing Strengths

Holistic Use of Groups

Mutual Aid

Mutual-Aid Mindset

Psychosocial Practice with Groups

Purposeful Use of Self

Shared Authority Strength-Centered Practice

Chapter Materials

Exercise 1: Need and Potential—Possibilities Come to Life

Appendix A: Mutual-Aid Dynamics and Their Related Skills

Mutual Aid: Roots and Raison d’être

Although not the first to identify mutual aid as the key to social group work, William Schwartz (1961) was the first to introduce the term into social work. By the time he adopted the term, however, not only had the concept long been recognized as central to social group work, it had been used in other fields as well. For example, mutual aid had already been used as a framework for thinking about biological evolution (Wilson 1979), as well as for analyzing social advancement (Kropotkin 1908). “Beside the ‘law of Mutual Struggle,’” Petr Kropotkin wrote,

there is in Nature the “law of Mutual Aid,” which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favored much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle (1908, p. x).

Mutual aid is not a fabrication of social work; nor is it a modern passing notion. The idea of people helping one another has been acknowledged for a long time as a human dynamic of some biological and social import. In terms of professional work with groups, a review of the literature reveals very clearly that mutual aid has always been at the heart of social group work practice. (See, for example, Breton 1990; Coyle 1949; Gitterman 1989; Gitterman and Shulman 1994; Glassman 2009; Hartford 1964, 1971, 1978; Konopka 1964, 1983; Kurland and Salmon 1992; Middleman 1978, 1987; Middleman and Wood 1990a, 1990b; Newstetter 1935; Northen and Kurland 2001; Papell and Rothman 1980; Phillips 1964; Schwartz and Zalba 1971; Shulman 2011; Wilson and Ryland 1949.) In the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, for example, settlement houses used mutual aid to help groups of immigrants acclimate themselves to new ways of life, with new challenges and expectations, by helping them help one another to meet all manner of social, educational, vocational, and recreational needs.

Today, mutual aid is acknowledged as the hallmark of social work with groups, as we have come to see that helping people engage in mutual aid meets several of the profession’s most powerful mandates for practice. By attending to both personal and interpersonal needs, we carry out its mandate for a psychosocial perspective (Glassman 2009; Northen and Kurland 2001; Papell and Rothman 1980). By attending to the group as a system as well as attending to each individual in the group, our practice reflects a holistic use of groups (Newstetter 1935; Shulman 2011, Tropman 2006)—a duality of focus that greatly distinguishes social work with groups from other approaches (Glassman 2009; Hartford 1964; Middleman and Wood 1990a; Shulman 2011). Finally, by focusing on people’s strengths instead of limitations, the mutual-aid model reflects a strength-centered way of helping people (Breton 1990; Glassman 2009; Middleman 1978; Newstetter 1935). In fact, group work is particularly well suited for meeting this last mandate, for in direct contrast to casework protocol, which requires that people assume and maintain a help-seeking position, mutual aid requires that they exercise and extend their strengths to help others as well as themselves.

Mutual Aid Defined and Described

So, what exactly is mutual aid? Mutual aid tends to be so misunderstood that we should begin with what it is not. Mutual aid is not a process of problem identification followed by the gift of advice—an all-too-common phenomenon of so-called helping groups. Composed of several possible dynamics (Shulman 2011), mutual aid can be said to have many different faces or looks (see Chapter 2). Often, when people think of mutual aid, they think of it as a process, and even more specifically as a particular kind of problem-solving process, but while mutual aid is a process, problem solving is only one of its dynamics; there are many other dynamics as well, such as sharing information and mutual support. When one group member offers a co-member a simple touch of comfort or nod of understanding it reflects a dynamic or dimension of mutual aid. When a group comes together as a force of advocacy or change, that is mutual aid. When members talk about issues considered taboo in other groups, that is mutual aid. When a group provides a safe haven for its members to explore differences and to try new ways of thinking, being, or doing, that too reflects mutual aid. Note that all of these dynamics are member–member based, not worker–member based. That is the overarching distinction between a mutual-aid system and groups in which the helping dynamics emanate primarily from the practitioner.

In addition to being a process, mutual aid is a result. To the extent that it is comforting to be with others who share common concerns, when group members realize that their co-members do share common feelings, needs, or concerns, for example, that result reflects mutual aid. Or to the extent that any one member’s concerns have been resolved through the group’s collective problem-solving efforts, that result may be said to reflect mutual aid. To the extent that group members emerge from some process having gained greater insight into themselves or a greater capacity for empathy, that result is mutual aid. Or to the extent that one member’s cause has been advanced through collective social action, that result too is mutual aid.

We have a substantial philosophical and epistemological foundation for conceptualizing mutual aid as the key to social work practice with groups. And although implications for practice have been developed from a variety of perspectives (such as composition, stage theory, self-determination, communication, decision making, relationships, group building, structure, systems theory, or skill, to name but a few), all theoretical fingers point to mutual aid as cause and effect of social work with groups. As cause, mutual aid is why we use groups as a helping medium, why we plan our work with groups the way we do, and why we intervene in process the way we do. As effect, mutual aid is the result of our interventions—that is, what people experience as a result of having participated in the group. In essence, then, mutual aid is why we do what we do, and it is what happens as a result of what we do. “But there’s more to social work with groups than mutual aid, isn’t there?” someone once asked me. Still a doctoral student in search of a dissertation, I had not yet fully digested the vast body of social group work literature and so, not overly secure of my position, I responded, “Oh, of course.” I still regret that response, for I have come to believe that exactly the opposite is true—that mutual aid is, in fact, the sine qua non of work with groups. In one form or another and at various levels of intensity, the opportunity for mutual aid exists from the moment a group meets (“Where do we hang up our coats?”) to the moment it ends (“Must we say good-bye?”). At the same time, mutual aid does not come about automatically. It needs communication. It needs a certain kind of climate. And it is most easily actualized in groups that are formed around a common cause.

Mutual Aid and Communication

Before mutual aid can be a result, it must reflect a process. And because mutual aid occurs through direct member-to-member contact, group members must have both some capacity and an opportunity to communicate and interact with one another. Further, they must have the freedom to do so if and when they believe they have a contribution to make to that process.

Not all forms of group process are conducive to mutual aid, as Middleman and Wood (1990b) point out. In fact, we can often gauge the value assigned to mutual aid by the way in which the members of a group do interact. For example, when the worker talks primarily to members individually, one by one, they are effectively denied any opportunity to talk with one another spontaneously and directly. This classic didactic style, labeled a maypole pattern of communication by Middleman and Wood (1990b), reflects the antithesis of the process most conducive to mutual aid. Or when group members are asked to take turns talking in relation to any given subject, for example, they may have occasion to respond to what others have said, but they are still denied the spontaneity so crucial to mutual aid. No matter if ideas spark other ideas; group members must simply “hold that thought” until it is their turn to talk. Thus, we would say that this style of communicating, labeled “round robin” by Middleman and Wood (1990b), also closes many windows of opportunity for mutual aid. The hot-seat syndrome (Middleman and Wood 1990b), which has also been called casework in a group (Kurland and Salmon 1992), can unfold into two slightly different scenarios, neither of which promotes mutual aid. In the first scenario, the worker engages in dialogue with a particular group member about that person’s issues while others listen and presumably learn through self-directed analogy or osmosis. Because there is little room for member-to-member interaction in this scenario, there is little occasion for mutual aid. Sometimes, on the other hand, group members are also engaged in this process; and while this latter scenario may promote interaction and spontaneity, the quality of interaction can often become—as many group-shy people would undoubtedly testify—harshly confrontational and less than helpful.

The only communication style that inherently or automatically promotes mutual aid is a free-floating one (Middleman and Wood 1990b). By establishing a norm of speaking when there is something to say regarding to the subject at hand, a free-floating pattern of group interaction permits members both to interact directly with one another and to contribute spontaneously to the group’s discussion.

Of course some room exists for groups to use a variety of communication styles, the choice of the moment depending on the developmental needs and skills of individual members (e.g., age), the needs and skills of the group as a system (e.g., how long the group has been together), and on the nature of the particular issues at hand (e.g., the type and intensity of the issues under discussion). It might not make sense for a problem-solving discussion to be carried out in round-robin fashion, for example, but it might make sense for the members of a new group to use such a format for introductions. Thus, although there may be moments in which other patterns of interaction make some sense, the free-floating pattern is still the most conducive to mutual aid as a general group norm.

The Mutual-Aid Climate

Although group members need freedom to interact, the quality of that interaction also needs to be conducive to mutual aid. It may be the quantity of interaction that sets the stage for mutual aid, but it is its quality that sets the tone for it. It is the quality of its processes that sets the mutual-aid system apart from, on one hand, the social tea group in which politeness reigns supreme and, on the other, so-called helping groups in which personal attack reigns supreme. In fact, as Lang (1986, 2010) claims, it is the very quality of group interaction that determines whether people will be able to build a community or whether they are destined to remain in a state of mere aggregation.

Therefore, the climate of mutual aid may be said to be one of balance. Scales are weighted on one side with freedom to express real feelings and ideas, but they are equally weighted on the other with an obligation to respect the feelings and ideas of others. That is, we want group members to feel safe to express their honest opinions and attitudes without the fear of being so harshly judged that having done so once they never dare to do so again, but we would also ask that they listen to what others have to say with an open mind and sensitivity. A mutual-aid climate is generous in spirit, then, but its generosity is tempered with the demand for serious attention to those issues of common cause around which the group was formed in the first place.

The mutual-aid climate is also one in which the need and desire for mutuality, cooperation, and companionship is balanced with the need and desire for individuality. Thus, while we discourage one-upmanship due to its inherent coun...