Group work's place in social work: a historical analysis

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Dec, 2001 by Janice Andrews

Ruby Pernell (interview, 1999), then a young social group worker, remembers the 1946 meeting she attended in Cleveland where the decision to alter the name of the group work association from American Association for the Study of Group Work, to the American Association of Group Workers was made. She recounted that there was a big debate about the name change:

   You have to remember that at that period the people who were interested in
   group work were not just people who were working in the social work field.
   You had social psychologists, the recreation people, the education people.
   They were all part of this. So, the question was should it become this kind
   of loose research kind of organization where people can develop their
   ideas, research or whatever, or should it become a membership organization.
   So, it became a membership organization.

Ruth Middleman (1992, p. 25) points out that group workers have always been a "special breed of social workers with different roots, traditions, history, and heroes." Group work, rooted in liberalism, attracted liberal to left-leaning members. Many were immigrants. Immigrants brought experiences to this country that affected their decision to enter social work, particularly social group work. Group work agencies often served "sort of as halfway houses for immigrants who became social workers" (Ephross interview, 1998).

The philosophical underpinnings of group work were strengthened by the influence of Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution, such as Hans Falck and Gisela Konopka, who held strong humanistic beliefs in the rights of group members and a passion for democratic participation. Falck (interview, 1998), who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1930s, decided to become a social group worker to "do something, as a Jew, about the problems of this country to make sure Hitler cannot happen here."

Konopka (interview, 1998) escaped from Germany in the late 1930s after several years as a Nazi-resistance fighter and imprisonment, and eventually found a home in the U.S. in 1941. Her life experiences brought with her the strong belief in the humanization of all social services and the ability to enhance individuals while also helping them to be concerned for others. Her unwillingness to give up when hope seemed gone in her own life helped Konopka provide hope to others throughout her group work career. "From the day the Nazi spit in my face", she says, "and I sat helplessly in the cell, I learned to say to myself, `I may die here, unknown, unsung. But I may come out and then I'll be there!'" (Konopka, 1997, 58).

Within social work, Jewish men and women were drawn to group work because Judaism as both a religion and a culture is distinctly communal--"even if you're not a sinner, you're responsible for the sins of the community" (Ephross interview, 1998). Ephross explains that for Jews, group work enabled them to practice a commandment to "repair the world". This concept, akin to similar concepts in Catholicism and other religions, lends moral sanction to group work community building.