Main description:

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.

Contents:

Contents
Expanding Our View of Support Groups as Open Systems

Supportive Group Interventions With Caregivers of Frail Older Adults
Evaluating Process, Outcome, and Satisfaction In Community-Based Cancer Support Groups
Women With Postpartum Psychiatric Illness: A Professionally Facilitated Support Group
The Unique Social Ecology of Groups: Findings From Groups for African Americans Affected by Sickle Cell Disease
Making It Happen: From Great Idea to Successful Support Group Program
My Partner Is Hurting: Group Work With Male Partners of Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse
A Support Group for Families of Armed Services Personnel in the Persian Gulf War
Telephone Support Groups for Caregivers of Persons With AIDS
Computer-Based Self-Help Groups: A New Resource to Supplement Support Groups
Index
Reference Notes Included