The British model of groupwork

Mark Doel

doi:10.1921/gpwk20252683

Authors

Mark Doel

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1921/gpwk20252683

Keywords:

co-leadership, group work, groupwork, practice-led, Social Services Departments, social work

Abstract

Towards a British Model of Groupwork was published in the British Journal of Social Work (BJSW). By the time that this article appeared in1982, the BJSW had become the UK’s pre-eminent social work journal.

This article revisits this seminal article on social work with groups in order to consider how groupwork was viewed in those times, and to reflect on the changes that have occurred in the near-half century since its publication. The findings and assertions of the 1982 authors are summarised and examined. The authors' proposition that British groupwork practice in 1982 was pragmatic, eclectic and activity-oriented, with largely individually-oriented aims, and that groupwork theorising was largely practice-led, is revisited and re-examined in the light of subsequent experience.

Author Biography

Mark Doel

Mark Doel is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a registered social worker who began specialising in groupwork in the 1970s, completing post-qualifying training in groupwork in 1982. He led a major action research project over nine years to establish a groupwork service in a large UK Social Services Department; that experience and the evidence from 48 assessed portfolios of groupwork practice was the basis for one of Mark's three books about groupwork.

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