Group Work in Intermediate Treatment

Abstract

This article is concerned with the development of group work in a specialist intermediate treatment project. Using the technique of participant observation the author describes the use made of groups over a six-month period with young people, all of whom presented problems of disturbance and/or delinquency. The practice portrayed is not ‘model’ but illustrative of the dilemmas of practitioners beginning to work with groups of young people for the first time. The evidence of the study points to the difficulties that an over-simplified view of participation and democracy can create, and indicates the need for group workers to define their purpose and objectives and to establish a contract or working agreement with group members. In relation to the debate about ‘talking’ and ‘doing’ in intermediate treatment, it is suggested that a model of group work practice that distinguishes between ‘activity as an end in itself’, ‘activity as a means to an end’, and ‘focussed discussion’ may be helpful to group workers in conceptualizing the totality of their task. Social work with groups is still more talked about than practised. This article describes the attempts of a newly established team of intermediate treatment workers to practise group work with young adolescents whose behaviour and social circumstances were regarded as problematic. As a part-time researcher attached to the project team, the author had access through participant observation to groups over a six-month period and he also had the opportunity of listening to group workers discussing their work at review meetings.

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