SOCIAL WORK WITH GROUPS

History of Group Work

- The roots of group work began in the settlement houses, the YMCA, YWCA,Boy
Scouts and Girl Scouts, and Jewish Centers of the 1800s
- These agencies focused on providing group programs for people considered
“normal”.
- Recipients of early group services came from recreation, informal education,
friendship and social action.
- Toynbee Hall: the first settlement house established in London in 1884, many
others followed in large cities in the USA.
- Many of the early settlement house workers were daughters of ministers; usually
from middle and upper class families.

Settlement Houses...

- 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.
- 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
- JANE ADDAMS: was the most noted leader in the settlement house movement
in the USA
- At the age of 25, she joined the Presbyterian Church which helped her find a
focus for her life: religion, humanitarianism and serving the poor.
- She studied the approach of the Toynbee Hall

Jane Addams/Hull House

- She later named her rented two-storey house as Hull House located in an
impoverished neighborhood in Chicago.
- Group activities in the Hull House included:
 - Literature reading group for young women; kindergarten and groups that
focused on social relationships, sports, music, painting, art, and discussion on
current affairs
Hull House…
- Hull House Social Science Club studied social problems in a scientific manner
and then became involved in social action efforts to improve living conditions.
- The group worked successfully for the passage of the Illinois legislations to
prevent the employment of children in sweatshops.
- Jane Addams also became interested in the various ethnic groups in the
neighborhood.
- She was fairly successful in binging the various nationalities together at Hull
House where they could interact and exchange cultural values and ideas.
- The success of Hull House served as model for the establishment of other
settlement houses in the other areas in Chicago and many large cities in the
USA.
- Settlement House workers believed that by changing neighborhoods, they could
improve communities, and by altering communities, they could develop a
better society.
- For her extraordinary contributions, Jane Addams received the Nobel for
Peace in 1931.

SOCIAL WORK WITH GROUPS IN THE PHILIPPINES

A. BEFORE THE 60S: SOCIALIZATION GOALS

- may be traced to the introduction of socio-economic movements during
the American rule such as:
YMCA -1911
YWCA -1926
Boy Scouts of the Phils. – 1936
- Paved the way for the establishment of agencies that used groups for
personality development and character building through wholesome
leisure time and recreational activities.

- By the late 50s, there were already those that were group-serving
agencies like the Phil. Youth Welfare Coordinating Council using groups
for preventive and developmental through leadership and skills
training for the OSY.
 - In family welfare agencies like the Foster Parents Plan, Inc.- mothers
were organized to promote responsible parenthood, vocational
efficiency and vocational training.
- 1958-1959, the Phil. Mental Health Association already had a community
outreach program for the prevention of juvenile delinquency in selected
communities in the City of Manila

B. THE SIXTIES: PREVENTION, TREATMENT, AND DEVELOPMENTAL

GCOALS

- Mental health agencies like the Special Child Study Center, Inc. -
organized parents’ groups to help the participants to understand, accept,
and deal with their children’s conditions.
- At the Phil. Mental Association – conducted group therapy sessions,
using psycho-drama with emotionally disturbed patients in its day care
center

-
Field of govt housing and resettlement during the sixties
- social workers of the DSW formed tenants associations in the housing
area, identified common problems and formed small groups each dealt
with a particular problem:
Examples: OSY – would address problems of unemployment,
idleness, lack of skills, etc.
- Mothers’ group – addressing problems relating to child care, household
management, and family planning
- Contribution of some schools of social work in the development of social
group work was also well recognized. Among the first social workers in
the govt. housing were graduates of the UP, Phil. School of Social
Work/PWU, in its field placement program.
- Also St. Luke’s Hospital’s field placement of students who engaged in
developmental and preventive goals with poverty-stricken families on an
out-patient bases; therapeutic goals with patients in the psychiatric ward
were pursued.

C. THE SEVENTIES : EMPHASIZING DEVELOPMENT GOALS

- 1976: Dept of Social Welfare became DSSD, to undertake development

programs and services for the bottom 30% of the country’s population.
- Emphasis on the developmental social welfare was spurred by
the
 UN Declaration of the:
First Development Decade - 1960s
Second Development Decade – 1970s

- Implemented self-employment assistance, leadership training, day care,

responsible parenthood, family life education programs,
Barangay Approach - facilitated these efforts
Worker as the point of entry
Group was used as the main instrument of service.

In the late sixties and seventies: social workers in the juvenile and domestic
relations courts also used groups to help provide legal offenders with group experiences
aimed at their socialization and/or re-socialization.
- Social workers employed in the orphanages provide their wards with
group experiences for their socialization purposes.
THE DECLARATION OF MARTIAL LAW
(1972-1981)
- provoked a great deal of consciousness-raising efforts aimed at making many rural
and urban realize that many of their problems (lack of basic amenities such as water,
low-cost housing, medical facilities, employment.) were due to deficiencies in their
social situations.
- It was therefore imperative for social workers to help people organize and use
themselves as major resource (referred to in the literatures as “community group
work”.
The Present Scene:
Most agencies today serve not just for one but several purposes:
1) Developmental,
2) socialization/re-socialization, and
3) treatment or rehabilitation.

1. DEVELOPMENTAL PURPOSE
- Emphasizes human and community resource mobilization
Examples: public agencies which invest a major portion of their resources
for the support of livelihood programs, training for leadership and small-scale business
management, make decisions on the livelihood projects to be undertaken; day care
centers
2. SOCIALIZATION PURPOSE
- Carried out by organizing groups that are intended primarily to help the members to
acquire the values, attitudes and norms of the society of which they are a part.
Examples: programs for street children, probation offices and correctional institutions

3. TREATMENT PURPOSE
- Focuses on the use of the small group to help individuals who already have a problem
or breakdown in their social functioning.
Examples: social agencies organizing groups of victims of natural disasters, child
abuse, adult sexual abuse, drug abuse, for the terminally ill, physically handicapped,
cancer survivors, etc.

Except for the limited pursuit of the socialization purpose of group work by socio-civic
organizations in the early decades of their existence in the country in 1920 to1960s,
and the active pursuit of developmental group work programs in the seventies, it can
be concluded in the last ten years or so, that there is no one group work purpose that
has emerged as predominant.
ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING SOCIAL GROUP WORK

- In general, social group work is based on the following basic assumptions:

1) Man is a group animal.
2) Social interaction is the result of group life.
3) Man’s achievements can be increased, changed and developed through group
experiences.
4) The capacity to solve problems may be increased through group experiences.
5) Group experience changes the level of individual aspirations and desires.
6) Group recreational activities are beneficial to both individual and society.
7) Group experience has permanent impact on individuals.
8) Group work always focus its attention on two types of activities --- programme and
social relationship in the group.
9) Professional knowledge and skills are essential for working with the group.
10) Knowledge of social science is required to deal with the group.