Social Work with Individuals, Groups and Communities
The helping process (individuals)
Intake and referral → study (facts, feelings, environment) → assessment/diagnosis → intervention plan → implementation → termination → evaluation and follow-up. Core skills: active listening, empathy, open and closed questioning, reflecting feelings, silence, partialisation, confrontation, referral.
Groups
Tuckman's stages - forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning - describe how a group matures. The worker moves from leading (forming) to facilitating (performing). Group types: recreation, education, growth, therapy, task/work groups, self-help groups.
Communities
Practice uses participatory tools - social mapping, transect walk, seasonal calendar, Venn diagram of institutions, stakeholder analysis, participatory monitoring. Principles: felt need first, community participation, self-reliance, use of local leadership, and never doing for the community what it can do for itself.
Worked example
A group of eight girls who dropped out of Class 9 after migration of parents. Reasoning: the need is shared, so use group work, not eight separate casework files. Stage 1 forming: ice-breakers, confidentiality contract. Stage 2 storming: resistance and blame; worker allows ventilation and sets norms. Performing: a bridge-course plan, linkage to the school's Samagra Shiksha coordinator, and peer monitoring. Adjourning: handover to a class teacher to avoid dependency.
Traps
Confusing assessment with diagnosis of disease; skipping termination and leaving clients dependent; using community organisation when the problem is individual (or the reverse); ignoring the storming stage and declaring the group a failure.