Empowerment in Action

Self-Directed Groupwork

Audrey Mullender, Dave Ward, Jennie Fleming

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780230298170
• eBook ISBN: 9781350312838
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

From three leading authorities in the field, this re-visit to a classic text demonstrates how groupwork can be used as a flexible tool for service user empowerment and participation across a range of contexts. Walking the reader through each stage in group formation and evolution, it is an essential text for health and social care professionals.

1

Groupwork

The Most Empowering and Effective Approach

The Groupwork Heritage

Groupwork is immensely powerful. Groups are part and parcel of everyday life and have the capacity to control, pacify or empower, depending on the underlying philosophy and how they are organized. The self-directed groupwork model set out in this book has proved to be not only empowering but also widely applicable.

There is a close connection between groupwork in general and the values of equality and democracy (Ward 2009). Distinguishing features of groupwork have been its emphasis on commonalities within problems and collective commitment. In groups, personal troubles can be translated into common concerns. The experience of being with other people in the same boat can engender strength and new hope where apathy and disillusionment reigned beforehand; a sense of personal responsibility, internalized as self-blame, can find productive new outlets. Alternative explanations and new options for change and improvement can be opened up. The demoralizing isolation of private misfortune reinforced by public disinterest, or even worse, moral condemnation and day-to-day surveillance, can be replaced in the course of collective enterprise with a new sense of self-confidence, as well as tangible practical gains that individuals on their own could not contemplate (Munford and Walsh-Tapiata 2001). When affiliated to groupwork, anti-oppressive working becomes enormously powerful with, for example, an all-female group (Cohen and Mullender 2003) or a group consisting entirely of disabled people (Campbell and Oliver 1996). Groupwork, then, can be exceptionally effective if it is linked to a purpose that explicitly rejects the ‘splintering’ of the public and private, of person and society (Berman-Rossi and Kelly 2004). None of this will be at all surprising to those who have worked with groups before.

Categorization of Groups

In the 1960s, the American writers and groupworkers Papell and Rothman (1966) set out a categorization of social groupwork that encompassed three models. They distinguished the remedial, reciprocal and social goals models whose aims were, respectively: firstly (remedial), equating to individual treatment of health or social problems in a group; secondly (reciprocal), the creation of a mutual aid system for the solution of difficulties, which in Britain might be called a self-help group; and, thirdly (social goals), the use of the group as a vehicle for social action and social change. This book is about using groups to meet social goals.

The influence of Papell and Rothman’s classification has been enormous. It underpinned all groupwork teaching in North America for decades and can be traced in writing on social groupwork from both the UK and the USA (for example, Brown 1992; Toseland and Rivas 2005; Preston-Shoot 2007). In turn, this influenced practice. The social goals model has been closest to community development and adult education approaches but its methodology was not developed in mainstream groupwork writing until 1991 when the first edition of this book appeared. Since then, self-directed groupwork has provided a clear framework for working towards social change through the medium of groupwork and many practitioners have adopted it for this purpose. The self-directed groupwork approach is characterized by a strong value base, an orientation towards external change and a refusal to label group members as sick or deficient in any way.

Of course, the very nature of what constitutes ‘groupwork’ (one word in the UK, two words in North America) can be debated and there is a danger that any classification will give the over-simplistic impression that models are competitive and mutually exclusive. A classification is only a way of trying to organize our thinking and will vary between authors. For example, Toseland and Rivas (2005) differ from Papell and Rothman (1966) in distinguishing two, rather than three, categories within which different types of groups can be found: ‘treatment goups’ (including therapy groups, support groups, education groups, socialization groups and growth groups) and ‘task groups’ (including social action groups, self-directed groups and multidisciplinary teams). The distinction they are making is primarily between internal and external change: that is, change in the members themselves or change in something outside of themselves. Self-directed groupwork clearly falls into the external change camp. Having said that, Cohen and Mullender (2000) have pointed out that members of self-directed groups may actually achieve a greater degree of individual change than members of deliberately therapeutic groups, simply because of the benefits of getting involved and of coming to believe in themselves through what they are doing. Certainly, self-directed groupwork is grounded in a great many generic skills, as identified in the Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups (Abels and Garvin 2010), and it is perhaps not surprising, therefore, to see progress on several fronts in well-run groups. Mullender and Ward (1985, 1991) have always seen the individual change achieved in self-directed groups as a ‘secondary advantage’ and it remains the external change goals that predominate.

Widely used among North American groupworkers (Pullen Sansfaçon et al. 2013) is a model explicitly defined as Mutual Aid (Schwartz 1971; Gitterman and Shulman 2005; Steinberg 2004). We have detected a tendency for self-directed groupwork to be seen as a variant of this model. However, while clearly there are commonalities and much that we have learnt and drawn from it, self-directed groupwork is different to the formal Mutual Aid model (Steinberg 2009). Mutual Aid group work sees the connection between environmental obstacles, stressful life conditions and interpersonal difficulties with group members sharing with and supporting other members in a similar position to themselves, whilst self-directed groupwork starts with the external and focuses there, celebrating the ‘secondary advantage’ of individual growth and change.

Does Groupwork Still Exist?

It is important to acknowledge that, at least in the UK, there has been a rapid decline in ‘practising, teaching and writing about groupwork’ by professionals (Cohen and Mullender 2003, p. 2). Others do take a more hopeful view (Doel 2006) and a recent special edition of the journal, Groupwork, featuring students’ papers from Ireland and the United States, shows that groupwork is still a feature of social work programmes elsewhere. In contemporary social work, there is a good deal of evidence of a continuing interest in groups per se and, indeed, a considerable amount of work taking place in groups, but much of this is not recognizable as genuine groupwork (Ward 2009). It does not pay substantial attention either to the knowledge base of group dynamics or to the practice base in groupwork method and skills. Nor does it incorporate the democratic and collective values that are at the core of groupwork. The group as the instrument of change has become the group as the context for intervention; concern for the dynamics of the group encounter has been superseded by a top-down instructional orientation, while democratic and collective values have been replaced by authoritarian and individualistic ones (Ward 2000). These characteristics are particularly visible in the group-based cognitive behavioural programmes that have been largely imported from North America to work with offenders and others.

These changes can be contextualized within wider socio-economic changes. The introduction of market practices to the delivery of social services, new managerialism, a drive towards narrower specialisms in health and social care practice, new ‘competency-led’ approaches to professional education and training, have all made it unfashionable and difficult to own many of the values and purposes of genuine groupwork. These stress that the core process of groupwork is the interaction between a group of people based on mutuality as the means of achieving group purpose and that groupwork is naturally anti-oppressive in its context, purpose, method, group relationships and behaviour (Abels and Garvin 2010).

Genuine groupwork (as opposed to work-in-groups that does not use the group dynamic) may have become unfashionable amongst some precisely because it acknowledges that groups develop a life of their own over which the groupworker cannot ever have complete control and that the agenda can be holistic and the process democratic. Group members will want to raise what is important to them, no matter what rules and boundaries have been set. Also, workers need real skill to ‘go with the flow’ for productive ends (Blacklock 2003). Such free-flowing characteristics are out of kilter with a climate that emphasizes discipline and individual responsibility and, at an organizational level, pre-set objectives and audited outcomes. The reach of political control is deep and extends not only into government agencies but increasingly into the not-for-profit or voluntary sector, which has taken on more and more functions on behalf of government and has become reliant on the funding received for these (Sennett 2011). Pullen Sansfaçon (2011) has shown the influence and impact of what workers perceive as required behaviour by their organizations, in constraining critical thinking and practice and in setting the parameters of what is seen as possible. Unsurprisingly, genuine groupwork has become more difficult to set up in government social work agencies, in criminal justice settings and some voluntary organizations than we found twenty years ago – the available space has been squeezed.

However, there may be changes on the horizon. In the UK, the propensity for risk-averse, constricted approaches to practice is beginning to be seen to have unexpected, unintended and dangerous effects and outcomes. There has been a reassertion of the notion of professional judgement and recognition of the messiness and unpredictability of the situations in which social workers are involved (Munro 2011). This has been given official credence through the work of the Social Work Reform Board and the newly established College of Social Work in formulating a Professional Capabilities Framework for Social Work (The College of Social Work 2012). This sets out a map of the learning and capabilities required of social workers throughout their careers. Among the nine capabilities, which ‘should be seen as interdependent, not separate’ and which ‘throughout their careers, social work students and practitioners need to demonstrate’ (ibid., p. 1), are domains requiring the application and promotion of ethical principles and values; of anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive principles; of human rights, social justice and economic well-being and the application of critical reflection to inform professional judgement, authority and decision making (ibid., pp. 1–3). If sustained, these developments would represent a climate more favourable to genuine groupwork. Furthermore, alongside a reduction in professionally facilitated groupwork – in the UK at least – has run a considerable increase in self-run, patient-led and service user-led groups, founded on the democratic and collective values that are the essence of groupwork.

There are signs that not simply genuine but critical groupwork is surviving and thriving in other environments. In the course of our own practice and whilst researching for this book, we have been working with or have discovered such activity in many places. In the UK, it is to be found within parts of the health services and of the voluntary sector and in some of the short-term community initiatives under the governmental programmes to combat community disadvantage. As explained in the Introduction, we have also found an ever-growing number of groups facilitated from within the group membership – without professional support – where people have come together to further their combined aims and to challenge the oppression they face. Moreover, inspiringly, we have discovered many examples in other countries and cultures, some of which we have had the privilege to be directly involved in. We will draw upon this broad span for the examples in this book.

The Emergence of Self-Directed Groupwork

Self-directed groupwork, as we shall go on to describe, has proved to be an effective and empowering vehicle for change, based on anti-oppressive values and capable of confronting entrenched mechanisms of power. Through resisting labels, raising awareness and then assisting people in setting their own agendas for change, it has led to the achievement of apparently unattainable goals by individuals previously written off as inadequate and beyond help, made subject to basic hand-outs and/or supervisory surveillance. Putting it another way, self-directed groupwork has opened up opportunities for people whose potential to take action on their own behalf has been stifled by externally based restrictions and by limiting self-beliefs and assumptions telling them that they do not have the abilities, rights or scope to act. These achievements will be demonstrated in many of the practice examples that will be used throughout the book. Self-directed groupwork is, then, grounded in the collective strength of people organizing together. Central to it is a synthesis of participant-led analysis and participant-led action.

Background to the model

Some considerable time before the term ‘empowerment’ became fashionable, our involvement in developing the self-directed groupwork model marked our striving towards an understanding of the relationship between oppression, power and change. The model was rooted in groups we went on to study but, initially, in our own practice: in the Nottingham ‘Who Cares’ Group, which ran a local campaign for children and young people in foster care and residential care, and with a group of young women who had children whilst still at school themselves, who were part of a campaign to improve the educational provision for students with children. The Ainsley Teenage Action Group, a neighbourhood-based group was another early example of the self-directed groupwork model that will be described in full in Chapter 6. (See the Appendix 1 for a summary of the major past and current group examples that recur throughout this book.) Community-based groupwork with young people in trouble with the law, of which the Ainsley Group was one example, was the context both of the first full-length practice accounts (Burley 1982; Ward 1982) and the earliest theoretical formulations (Ward 1979, 1982) of what later became self-directed groupwork.

The late 1970s had seen considerable moves in the sphere of youth work towards involving young people in developing and running their own services and towards a merging of the concepts of youth work (Department of Education and Science 1969) and community action (see, for example, Lees and Smith 1975). The theory of youth work up to that time had leant heavily on social ‘education’ (Davies and Gibson 1967), although in some quarters there were attempts to stretch the brief to encompass social change objectives (Davies 1979; Smith 1980; National Youth Bureau 1981). At that time there were also a number of linked initiatives, extending these ideas into work with young people in the social work and probation spheres (Ward 1979, 1982). These spheres of operation marked the work out as separate both from youth work and from community action, though it shared values with the radical end of the former and goals with the latter. The practitioners involved, in looking for an appropriate term to describe their work, lighted on ‘social action’ as moving away from the social education roots of youth work into the ‘action’ of community action.

In the 1970s and into the early 1980s, social work was sharply criticized for ‘de-politicizing’ social problems, falling to political inducement ‘to see … new fields of practice as politically neutral – as part of the territory of professionalism’ (Jordan and Parton 1983, p. 1). Once the impossibility of neutrality is recognized, in that it colludes with oppression, we would argue that social action becomes inevitable.

In the course of our earliest investigations, from the mid-1980s, we came across individuals whose work we admired and whose values we shared. They were working to facilitate the users of social care and other services to confront oppression in its many forms and, in this way, were moving beyond analysis into action. We met and talked with groupworkers and participants of these groups, read ac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: What Is It All About?
• 1 Groupwork: The Most Empowering and Effective Approach
• 2 Empowerment: What Does It Really Mean?
• 3 Taking Stock: The Centrality of Values
• 4 The Group Takes Off
• 5 The Group Prepares to Take Action
• 6 Taking Action
• 7 The Group Takes Over
• 8 Spreading the Reach and Moving Forward
• Appendix I Group Examples
• Appendix II The Centre for Social Action
• Appendix III Principles and Stages of the Self-Directed Groupwork Model
• References
• Index