Mutual Aid
Mutual aid as group work technology can be understood as an exchange of help wherein the group member is both the provider as well as the recipient of help in service of achieving common group and individual goals (Borkman, 1999; Gitterman, 2006; Lieberman, 1983; Northen & Kurland, 2001; Schwartz, 1961; Shulman, 2006, Steinberg, 2004; Toseland & Siporin, 1986). The rationale for cultivating mutual aid in the group encounter is premised on mutual aid's resonance with humanistic values and the following propositions: 1) members have strengths, opinions, perspectives, information, and experiences that can be drawn upon to help others in the group; 2) helping others helps the helper, a concept known as the helper-therapy principle (Reissman, 1965) which has been empirically validated (Roberts et al., 1999); and 3) some types of help, such as confrontation, are better received when emanating from a peer rather than the worker (Shulman, 2006).
Mutual aid is often erroneously understood as simply the exchange of support. Mutual aid is better conceptualized as multidimensional with at least 10 types of processes or activities that occur amongst and between members, including: sharing data, the dialectic process, discussion of taboo topics, the all in the same boat phenomenon, developing a universal perspective, mutual support, mutual demand (including confrontation), rehearsal of new skills, individual problem solving, and the strengths in numbers phenomenon (Gitterman, 2004; Shulman, 2006; Steinberg, 2004).
Read more about this topic: Social Work With Groups
Famous quotes containing the words mutual and/or aid:
“Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically—for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist—but then what isn’t?”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“The duty of the State toward the citizen is the duty of the servant to its master.... One of the duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves the victims of such adverse circumstances as makes them unable to obtain even the necessities for mere existence without the aid of others.... To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by government—not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)