Social Work with Individuals and Groups Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Couple counselling is a micro level intervention.

In the micro, mezzo and macro scheme of social work practice, the micro level covers direct, face-to-face work with individuals, couples and families. Counselling a husband and wife together is clinical work of exactly this kind: the worker deals with the persons and their relationship, not with an organisation or a policy.

'Family' and 'relationship' describe the focus of the work, but they are not levels of intervention in that scheme. 'Primary' belongs to a different classification, the levels of prevention (primary, secondary, tertiary), so it does not answer the question either.

Answer: D

The one that is not a reason is members decide if they wish to be members of the group or not.

Ice breakers are short exercises used at the start of a group's life to reduce initial anxiety. They help members introduce themselves, get acquainted with one another, and open up communication so that the group can begin its work.

Whether a person joins the group is settled earlier, at the intake or pre-group stage, through interviews and contracting with the worker. An ice breaker is a warming-up device for people who are already members, not a mechanism for deciding membership, so this option is the odd one out while the other three are its standard purposes.

Answer: C

The principle not followed was continuous individualisation.

Among the principles of social group work set out by Harleigh Trecker, continuous individualisation means that the worker keeps recognising each member as a unique person with distinct needs and capacities throughout the life of the group. A visually impaired member cannot follow a discussion built on charts and diagrams; a worker attending to her individually would have adapted the material, for example by describing the charts aloud.

Guided and controlled group interaction concern how the worker steers interaction in the group as a whole, and flexible functional organisation concerns the group's structure. None of these addresses the needs of one particular member, which is the failure here.

Answer: D

The incorrect purpose is if the client has malafied intention, police can be informed.

Process recording is a detailed written account of an interview or session, prepared by a social work student or worker. Its purposes are educational and professional: it is a teaching and learning tool in field work supervision, it lets another worker follow up the case if the student is not available in a crisis, and it helps the student understand her own feelings and behaviour in the interaction.

Reporting a client to the police is not a function of the record; using recordings that way would conflict with the confidentiality on which the helping relationship depends. The other three options are all accepted uses.

Answer: A

The key is both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

The two statements describe what Irvin Yalom calls the corrective recapitulation of the primary family group, one of the therapeutic factors of group work. Members tend to relate to the worker and to one another as they once related to parents and siblings. Because the group becomes the setting in which those painful family experiences are relived and dealt with (R), members can find that they are treated differently this time and that they are worthy of love and care (A).

So (R) is the mechanism behind (A), not merely a separate true statement, which rules out the other three codes.

Answer: A

The three classic models are social goals, reciprocal and remedial.

Catherine Papell and Beulah Rothman (1966) distinguished three models of social group work. The social goals model uses groups to build social consciousness and civic responsibility. The remedial model uses the group as a means of treating individual members. The reciprocal (mediating) model, associated with William Schwartz, sees worker and members as working out a mutual aid system.

The other sets add terms such as therapeutic, residual, advance or team, which are not part of that classification.

Answer: C

It is the first book of social case work.

Mary Richmond published Social Diagnosis in 1917. Drawing on her work with the Charity Organization Society, it set out a systematic method of gathering evidence about an individual or family and their situation, making a diagnosis, and planning help. It is regarded as the first textbook of social casework and of professional social work method.

Social group work and community organisation developed as methods later and had their own early texts. Social and preventive medicine is a branch of medicine, not a social work method.

Answer: C

The technique is Psychodrama.

Psychodrama, developed by Jacob L. Moreno, is a group therapy method in which clients act out situations from their lives on a stage, playing themselves and sometimes the people they are in conflict with (role reversal), while other group members take supporting roles. Acting the scene lets the client express feelings and rehearse new ways of responding.

Psychodynamics is a theoretical approach to the mind, not a role-play technique. Psychoneurosis is an old name for a category of disorder. Psychoeducation means teaching patients and families about an illness and its treatment.

Answer: B

Crisis intervention is psychological first aid.

Crisis intervention is short-term, immediate help given to a person whose usual coping has broken down after a crisis such as a bereavement, disaster or assault. Its aims are to ensure safety, reduce distress and restore the person to at least their previous level of functioning, which is why it is described as emotional or psychological first aid.

A life-changing event is the crisis itself, not the intervention. Behaviour modification is a longer-term therapy based on learning principles, and gratifying personal needs is not a helping method at all.

Answer: D

This is the principle of self-determination.

Client self-determination, one of Felix Biestek's seven casework principles, is the recognition of the client's right and need to make his or her own choices and decisions. The worker helps the client see the options and their consequences but does not decide for the client, within the limits set by law, the client's capacity and the rights of others.

Confidentiality is the protection of information the client shares. Acceptance is dealing with the client as he or she really is, without condemnation. Assimilation is not a casework principle at all; it describes a minority group taking on the culture of the majority.