Group work is … powerful! This stuff changes … lives: training on group processes for facilitators of curriculum-based groups

ABSTRACT

This article describes a four-year group work training project conducted with facilitators of curriculum-based parenting groups who had not been trained in group work or group processes. A total 14 group facilitators and 144 group members from 34 groups were involved in the training and the mixed method evaluation. Participants described how the training modified their group facilitation, helping them understand that the groups themselves as well as the curricula were informative and transformative, and that group members as well as group facilitators had roles. Further, facilitators indicated that the training resulted in fundamental change in their self-perceptions from being simply purveyors of a parenting curriculum to empathic agents of change as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Groupwork
• parent groups
• mutual aid
• group processes
• training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by two grants from the Connecticut Children’s Trust Fund, which subsequently became a part of the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, and was approved by the UConn Human Subjects Review Board. We wish to thank Karen Foley Schain, then Director of the Children’s Trust Fund (CTF), and Linda Harris, then CTF Program Director, who facilitated this work. We are especially appreciative of the Nurturing Parenting group facilitators and group members who openly and generously shared their time, opinions and stories; The Connecticut Children’s Trust Fund which became part of the CT Office of Early Childhood.