Co-Facilitation: Fashion or Function?

ABSTRACT

Beginning group workers often assume that two workers are better than one when planning to conduct groups. The purpose of this paper is to review the common practice of co-facilitation, both as it frequently appears in practice and in the group literature. This paper addresses the degree to which attention has been given to the issue in the literature, both in social group work journals and in commonly used social group work texts. The essential questions to be addressed are: (1) how, if at all, assumptions about co-facilitation have been addressed, rationalized or challenged in terms of worker purpose and role; and (2) whether the presence of more than one worker discourages collaboration and inclusion and, inadvertently or purposively, promotes the view of the worker as expert.

KEYWORDS:

• Group work
• co-facilitation
• worker role
• worker purpose
• values