Maeda J Galinsky

Support Groups: Current Perspectives on Theory and Practice provides a framework for understanding and examining supportive group interventions. It provides descriptions of different kinds of support groups and alerts practitioners and educators to the factors they should consider in planning, implementing, and evaluating support group services. The book also offers guidance in using innovative approaches to providing support services through computer groups and telephone groups.Human service professionals and social work educators, practitioners, and students will find these topics covered in Support Groups:evaluation of support groups a support group model guidelines for support group practice innovative use of support groups issues in support group practiceThe purpose of this book is to examine state-of-the-art support group practice. Support groups are conceived as the center of a continuum of supportive group interventions, overlapping with self-help groups at one end and treatment groups at the other. The chapters are placed within the context of the open systems model developed by the editors. This model provides a framework for understanding factors that affect support groups, for guiding intervention, and for evaluating their outcomes.

When social workers draw on experience, theory, or data in order to develop new strategies or enhance existing ones, they are conducting intervention research. This relatively new field involves program design, implementation, and evaluation and requires a theory-based, systematic approach. Intervention Research presents such a framework. The five-step strategy described in this brief but thorough book ushers the reader from an idea's germination through the process of writing a treatment manual, assessing program efficacy and effectiveness, and disseminating findings. Rich with examples drawn from child welfare, school-based prevention, medicine, and juvenile justice, Intervention Research relates each step of the process to current social work practice. It also explains how to adapt interventions for new contexts, and provides extensive examples of intervention research in fields such as child welfare, school-based prevention, medicine, and juvenile justice, and offers insights about changes and challenges in the field. This innovative pocket guide will serve as a solid reference for those already in the field, as well as help the next generation of social workers develop skills to contribute to the evolving field of intervention research.

Support Groups: Current Perspectives on Theory and Practice provides a framework for understanding and examining supportive group interventions. It provides descriptions of different kinds of support groups and alerts practitioners and educators to the factors they should consider in planning, implementing, and evaluating support group services. The book also offers guidance in using innovative approaches to providing support services through computer groups and telephone groups.Human service professionals and social work educators, practitioners, and students will find these topics covered in Support Groups:evaluation of support groups a support group model guidelines for support group practice innovative use of support groups issues in support group practiceThe purpose of this book is to examine state-of-the-art support group practice. Support groups are conceived as the center of a continuum of supportive group interventions, overlapping with self-help groups at one end and treatment groups at the other. The chapters are placed within the context of the open systems model developed by the editors. This model provides a framework for understanding factors that affect support groups, for guiding intervention, and for evaluating their outcomes.