Group Work Intervention with Adolescents

This paper describes Strategies taught to adolescents that will assist them with increased self-esteem and confidence. The group will also create opportunity for young individuals to think about their self esteem in relation to issues they face, and develop positive approaches and strategies to assist them in their daily lives. Members share what it is like to be an adolescent, to adjust to social life and manage tension gain confidence, and getting and keeping employment etc.   (Osei-Hwedie, Mwansa, and Mufune, 1990, p. 188).
The group is open-ended, new members can begin at anytime. As mandated by group work theory, the purpose of the meeting was a composite of the expressed purposes of both members and workers (Northen and Kurland, 2001). The group never consisted of more than fifteen adolescents and was often as low as ten or eight.   This evenly split mixed sex group was set up for long term activity based work one evening each week.   Northen and Kurland (2001) defines group work as a method of social work that is utilized in order to `help individuals to enhance their social functioning through purposeful group experiences, and to cope more effectively with their personal, group or community problems`.
This definition shows a tradition within group work of helping individuals with problems. Brown provides a more comprehensive definition of group work (1994, p.8). He states that `group work provides a context in which individuals help each other; it is a method of helping groups as well as helping individuals; and it can enable individuals and groups to influence and change personal, group, organizational and community problems.   He goes on to distinguish between `relatively small and neighborhood centered` work and `macro, societal and political approaches` within community work, explaining that only the former may be properly classified as group work. Thus the role of group work can be seen as one which places emphasis on sharing of thoughts, ideas,...