1. 0INTRODUCTION
Group work as a one of the methods of social work consists of various types of groups, and empowerments exist amongst them. In empowerment groups people are been empowered, and equipped with relevant skills to stand on their own and change their own challenging situations they meet in life, and again empowerment groups helps people to live a positive life, and to have a forward thinking mentality or mountain top mentality, that is thinking beyond every tough situations they experience in their lives and not just to focus in the here and now situation
Empowerment
Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individuals and communities. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in their capacities. Empowerment also includes encouraging and developing the skills for self sufficiency, with a focus on eliminating the future need for charity or welfare in the individuals of the group.
In simple definitional terms, the verb to empower means to enable, to allow or to permit and can be conceived as both self initiated and initiated by others. For social change agents, empowering is an act of building, developing and increasing power through cooperation, sharing and working together. Empowerment is probably the totality of the following or similar capabilities;
Having decision making power; Having access to information and resources for taking proper decisions; Having a range of options from which you can make choices; Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision making; Ability to learn skills for improving one’s personal or group power and Increasing one’s positive self-image and overcoming stigma
In short, empowerment is the process that allows one to gain the knowledge, skill-sets and attitude needed to cope with the changing world and the circumstances in which one.
2. WHAT CONSTITUTES EMPOWERMENT GROUPS?
Empowerment groups often constitutes of people of the same nature, gender and problem, for example: matriculated and unemployed individuals.
They are made up of common human needs which are educational, economical, and social and health needs. They constitute of various or three levels according to Albertyn (2000; 41-43) which are Micro, Interface and Macro level.
The micro level: At a micro level, since members share the same and common interest, they should have an ability to accomplish tasks, attitude and behavioral change towards their problems. Members need to believe in success and have faith in growth and themselves,
and they should have certainty of development and goals. This usually applies to the individual himself, his thoughts, attitudes and attributions towards the problem.
Interface level: At this level, people or members should have the ability to affect the behavior of others in order to make a difference. Should exercise influence, have a collective group efficacy and collaborative decision making. An ability to maintain group identity and mutual support through problem solving. It is usually called an interpersonal level, where members interact with one another.
Macro level: Members should have an ability to make a difference and have a command over events. Awareness of their rights and increased political power. Critical reflection of social problems and understanding their society or communities. Increased and access to resources, members should also be ready to participate and take action at a social or community level.
It is the biggest or largest level of group make up, they need to understand their communities, society and the environments itself.
3. THE THEORETICAL BASE OF EMPOWERMENT.
Empowerment practice has proved to enhance the ability of individuals, families, groups and communities to develop the power to act on their behalf on the society. Empowerment draws its practice on theoretical base from social work and other discipline,
such as health education, community development and community psychology. This perspective assumes that, social problems occurs in all tiers of multilevel systems and exist in groups with varying degree of power and conflicting interests.
Furthermore, it does not aim at an ultimate fit among different group’s needs, expectations and resources. Instead, it becomes part of a struggle to make needs and resources compatible.
The empowerment perspective goes beyond certain negative and scarce resources; rather it recognizes that social interaction can generate personal or interpersonal power. Power in its positive sense refers to the ability to influence the course of one’s life, an expression of self-worth, the capacity to work with others to control aspects of public life, and access to the mechanisms of public decision making.
When used negatively though, it can block opportunities for stigmatized groups, exclude others and their concerns from decision making and be a way to control others.
According to Solomon, 1976, as cited in Gutierrez et al, 1998:8, power blocks can be directly and indirectly used and are the primary mechanisms that have personal and social costs. Direct power blocks restrict access to resources. Indirect power blocks include a lack of resources and those social values that support structures of inequality. One form of indirect power block is the negative valuation, which suggests to members of oppressed groups that they are deficient in some way. Negative valuations can interfere with the acquisition of adequate interpersonal, technical and social skills in the individual development.
Mullender and Ward(1991), as cited in Payne, 2005:310, has this view about the empowerment theory, that groups allow people to share resources, initiate and experiment with action jointly.
Their model of practice has five stages:
Pre –planning: Find a compatible co-working team, consultancy support and agree on empowering p-principles. Taking off: Engage with users as partners and plan the group jointly through ‘open-planning’.
Group preparation for action: help group to explore what issues are to be tackled, why these issues exist and how we can produce change.
Taking action: Group members carry out agreed actions. Taking over: Workers begin to withdraw, and the group reviews what it has achieved, seeing connections between what, why and how. This process continues throughout the group’s life.
4. WHAT CHARACTERISES EMPOWERMENT GROUPS?
Having power to express needs and deciding how these needs can be best met; Self-disclosure and self help and Knowledgeable
Having power to express needs and deciding how these needs can be best met
It characterizes empowerment groups because members in this particular group has power to express their needs freely and openly without fear, and decide how those needs can be best met. Members will seat down as a team and strategize,
or come up with different ideas and opinions in order to reach a concrete solution concerning the problem. Example: a group of single mothers sharing the difficulties of raising children without support of their fathers.
Members are able to take initiations and great responsibilities; they have got power to reach out for necessary resources and services that will help them to meet their goals and needs.
Members have power to play prominent roles without misusing that power to other people, and take responsibilities concerning their roles; hence role theory.
Self-disclosure
It performs several functions. It is a way of gaining information about another person. We want to be able to predict the thoughts and actions of people we know. Self-disclosure is one way to learn about how another person thinks and feels. Once one person engages in self-disclosure, it is implied that the other person will also disclose personal information. This is known as the norm of reciprocity. Mutual disclosure deepens trust in the relationships and helps both people understand each other more. You also come to feel better about yourself and your relationship when the other person accepts what you tell them.
It is a sign of good mental health and a healthy personality development. Individuals who are free to disclose, are shown to experience higher level of contentment, adaptively and competence, perceptivity extroversion and trust towards others.
It characterizes empowerment groups because members have self acceptance, self awareness, they are aware of their situations or problems they are facing. Members of the group are empowered fruitfully and they are not afraid to disclose about their own concerns, they are not afraid to seek help, and they are not trying to compare their situations with others. Members develop greater self-reflection regarding that; failure to self disclosure results in one’s hiding their real self from others , so to avoid shame, less self-reflection and becoming less effective in solving one’s problems.
Knowledgeable
It is a characteristic of empowerment groups because members are empowered with skills, and techniques about different things in life. They are open minded they have got the full information and understanding of different things; hence knowledge is power. Members have got the idea on how to handle life in a positive way and to survive. They are also equipped with all the necessary information that can help them to deal positively with their problems.
Members always avoid developing dependency syndrome; therefore they are independent and they do not have the fear or doubt of leading a life of purpose, or living a meaningful life.
5. JUDITH LEE’S VIEW ON EMPOWERMENT
Judith Lee provides an expanded definition of empowerment to relate not only to what is happening inside of people but to include political processes, objectives, and transformations, thereby restoring the term to its original meaning.
Lee’s theory framed within the ecological perspective that maintains a dual, simultaneous concern for people and environments is an empowerment approach to assist people to live to the fullest. Empowerment is both a process and outcome, as a process it includes attitudes and beliefs, validation through collective experience, knowledge and skills for critical thinking and social actions.
To practice this approach, lee recommends adoption of a multifocal vision. This vision includes an ecological view, including a stress, coping paradigm and other concepts related to coping. A historic perspective, learning a group‘s history of oppression, including related social policy. A critical perspective, a class perspective and multicultural perspective.
A global perspective
According to Lee empowerment perspectives is adjunct to the ecosystems frame work because it deals with issues of social justice and human rights. To be” empowered” a person or a group requires an environment that provides options and gives authority to the individual to chose. Central to the empowerment approach is the concept of power not in the sense of Weberian in the sense of liberation.
Lee further states that Implicit in this concept is an awareness that disadvantaged persons are threatened by powerful other in their lives. Their very economic hardship may stem from forces over which they are powerless and of which they may even be unaware. Empowerment practice, as Lee suggest, requires social worker to be agents of change, to help people gain or regain power in their lives.
The empowerment perspective has its origins in Solomon‘s (1976) groundbreaking work Black Empowerment, on the history of the struggle for equality by black people. Solomon saw the process of empowerment as means of increasing the personal, interpersonal, political and economic power so that people could take action to improve their life situation.
6. HOW DOES SOCIAL WORKER EMPOWER GROUPS?
Social worker engage in empowerment-focused practice they seek to develop the capacity of clients to understand their environment, make choices or decisions, take responsibility of their actions choices, and influence their life situations through organization and advocacy.
Social worker empower groups through facilitation of group development through developing their personal capacities to discover their potentials e.g. when a leader of group run a group of people with low self-esteem or self doubt the leader has to modify this behavior by giving group members tasks to perform in a group.
Social worker empower group by allowing group members to take actions towards their goals achievement rather than always doing things for group by involving and allocating tasks with responsibilities to them.
Once the group members develop skills in achieving their collective goals, the worker can further empower group by gradually by taking a back seat and allow group members to lead the change effort, by this the worker help group members to develop their self-confidence and also it encourage the social work value of self-determination.
When social worker empowers group members, must firstly considering them as competent and capable beings that are able to change their situations or behavior.
N.B For future social workers and group leaders and power holders be careful of its advantages and disadvantages it develop and it can also destroy or manipulate group members and other people you work with
7. HOW TO FACILITATE GROUPNESS?
Facilitation is described as any activity which makes tasks for others easier. According to the Macmillan English dictionary facilitation is described as to make it possible or easier for something to happen. Groupness is a sense of togetherness within the group or between members; it is the sense of being one. Groupness can also be the way that people work together as team harmoniously so.
In essence it is cohesiveness in a group. Social work leaders in a group can facilitate the group by assigning group members tasks of which requires them to interact with each other in a more participatory and active manner.
Leaders can also use discussions as a way of facilitating groupness, in discussions members are required to share information, ideas and their experiences with each other.
Through group maintenance roles
Group maintenance roles are focused on promoting and maintaining group relationship by:
Encouraging: being friendly and responsive to others and accepting their contribution
Expressing group feelings
Harmonizing: reconciling disagreements and encouraging members to explore their differences.
Principles of social work are also an effective way of facilitating groupness.
The principle of confidentiality can promote a sense of trust in group members; members can trust each other with their experiences and can ventilate their feeling to one another more freely,
share information without the fear of being exploited or their experiences being known by other people outside the boundaries of the group. Trust makes it easy for members to be close to each other.
Principle of individualization
If members can understand that each one of them is a unique human being and whatever problems they have or may have experienced, do not at any point affect them n a similar way, that would facilitate how they engage with each other, be able to encourage and comfort each other as a group. They have the spirit of togetherness because they understand one another.
Principle of acceptance
For members to work together effectively, they should start by first accepting each other. If members accept their problems and realize that they are not alone in that situation or they are not the only one experiencing the problem, then it allows them to accept each other with their situations. That is where confidentiality comes in. members can accept and acknowledge their differences.
Self determination
Having accepted and acknowledged their differences, it gives them more courage to work and make decisions together as a group to end up having changed their situations, though with the help of the group leader.
The group leader could facilitate groupness through her role as a facilitator. The leader could guide the process of decision making or the process of change in a group, by helping members decide on suitable and best decisions, by also helping members formulate their own common goal as a group, of which would help them work together as a team to accomplish that goal. The group leader’s role as a facilitator is to help them accomplish their tasks.
CONCLUSION
Empowerment groups are those groups whereby people are empowered and also enabled people to respond positively to their situations or problems which they encounter in their lives. Empowerments exist in all typologies of treatment groups. As you acknowledged from theoretical base of empowerment, the empowerment practice has proved to enhance the abilities of individuals, families and communities. As a leader of empowerment group you must empower people and also facilitate the groupness through encouraging members to learn to work together as individuals and as the whole communities in order to maintain their sustainable livelihood
