Support Groups: Current Perspectives on Theory and Practice provides a framework for understanding and examining supportive group interventions. It provides descriptions of different kinds of support groups and alerts practitioners and educators to the factors they should consider in planning, implementing, and evaluating support group services. The book also offers guidance in using innovative approaches to providing support services through computer groups and telephone groups. Human service professionals and social work educators, practitioners, and students will find these topics covered in Support Groups:

evaluation of support groups

a support group model

guidelines for support group practice

innovative use of support groups

issues in support group practice

The purpose of this book is to examine state-of-the-art support group practice. Support groups are conceived as the center of a continuum of supportive group interventions, overlapping with self-help groups at one end and treatment groups at the other. The chapters are placed within the context of the open systems model developed by the editors. This model provides a framework for understanding factors that affect support groups, for guiding intervention, and for evaluating their outcomes.