Deconstructing Group Work for Human Service Professionals

Spotlighting the skills of social group work, this handbook offers practical guidance and theoretical knowledge, enabling the reader to facilitate groups of varying types with increased clarity, purpose, and confidence. The reader is helped to understand what skill to employ, when, and why. New or veteran group facilitators are reminded to empower group members to both employ their strengths and engage in mutual aid – the fundamental value and methodology that underlies social group work. Specific skills help group members to coalesce as a cohesive group and optimize their capacity to reach their goals whether exploring therapeutic answers or accomplishing work tasks.

This book illustrates that there are “basics” to the method of human service work with groups that can help you to feel more at ease with and more effective at working with people in groups. The group work method is delineated for you, outlining: (1) skills of working with groups (ways of thinking or doing to make things happen), (2) practice principles (the moral reasoning that underlies what you choose to think and do in your practice), and (3) theoretical underpinnings for those choices (why your choices will achieve desirable ends). Anecdotal material and skills in action provide explicit examples of what skills look like in real time.

Social work students and academics as well as students and professionals working in the fields of youth work, counseling, mental health/clinical social work, and related health subjects will find this book of interest.

Dominique Moyse Steinberg, with a clinical background in child welfare and family service, has over 40 years of experience as educator, trainer, scholar, and researcher in social work with groups. She has practiced primarily in New York City and taught group work, research, and writing for publication at Hunter College, Smith College, and Simmons University School of Social Work. A certified professional mediator since 2000, Steinberg has also offered international workshops on addressing group conflict and catalyzing mutual aid. She has several research grants to her credit and is the author of many books and articles on group work process and values, research methods, and elder care.

Eileen C. Lyons, a social group worker by training, has dedicated her career to the youth development field, working in education, foster care, social work, and out-of-school time programs. Lyons’ career includes 17 years as Executive Director of Interfaith Neighbors in NYC where she pioneered programs in literacy and bereavement. Lyons co-founded the journal Afterschool Matters, now published by the National Institute on Out-of-School Time at the Wellesley Centers for Women. Since 2014, Lyons has held the position of Executive Director of Fresh Youth Initiatives, a community-based organization in Washington Heights that provides comprehensive social services and youth development programs to immigrant and first-generation children and their families.