Choosing a Groupwork Approach

Oded Manor is Principal Lecturer in Social Work at Middlesex University and editor of the interdisciplinary journal Groupwork. He has thirty years' experience of practice, supervision and research in groupwork. He has published numerous articles in the field and he is the author of Family Work in Action: A Handbook for Social Workers. Dr Manor has also lectured in various parts of the world.

• Part One: Evolving a Framework. 1. Connecting the fragments: the role of paradox. 2. Stages in a three-cornered world. Part Two: Applying the Inclusive Blueprint. 3. Forming the group and the engagement phase. 4. Authority crisis and the empowerment phase. 5. Intimacy crisis and the mutuality phase. 6. Separation crisis and the termination phase. Part Three: Wider Implications: The Powers of Paradox. References. Index.

The book is designed to help group workers analyze and think about complex interplay of system levels, structures, processes and content present in any group. The value of this analysis is that workers can make deliberate decisions about when and where to intervene based on analysis, as opposed to common practice, tradition or a variety of other less defensible positions. Another strength of this book is that it is clearly written from a social work perspective, a person in environment perspective is found throughout the book.