Description

Social work groups require the consideration of the dynamics of group development, intervention strategies, and ethics, which are all the focus of week eight. Students will read Hepworth et al. (2023) and their chapter regarding facilitating social work groups, which provides insight into stages of group development. During class we will make further connections to group dynamics and interventions in group work. Students will present their elevator pitch for the community group facilitation activity. We will have an example of an empowerment group and some small group discussions on how to understand ethical decisions in group work and planning. The agenda for class is as follows:

• Group Intervention Pitch
• Group dynamics in social work facilitation
• Empowerment groups
• Ethics in group work
• Planning and implementing of social work groups

Learning Objectives this week include:

• Describe the stages of group development and identify examples of group dynamics within each stage.
• Analyze group norms through the lenses of orienting perspectives of social work.
• Define empowerment and articulate the core principles of empowerment theory as applied to group work.
• Identify ethical dilemmas that arise in group work and apply a structured decision-making process to navigate them.
• Plan a social work group for a specific population.