Constructive Action

Introduction

The purpose of the Constructive Action is to help a group of women with their day-to-day problems. The social problem is domestic violence, and how it causes the groups participants to leave their homes and reside in a shelter setting. Many of the group participants suffer with depression, post traumatic stress disorder, prescriptive and non-prescriptive drug usage, low self-esteem, and are angry with themselves and everyone around them (including their children). The participants in the group will work on developing social skills in order to communicate, interact, and knowing what a healthy relationship looks like. The Constructive Action will indicate the group participants goals, methods used, and evaluations. Through the use of attending behavior, open-ended questions, encouraging, paraphrasing and summarizing (Ivey and Ivey, 2007), some of the group participants will be able to tell their stories. Person-Centered therapy will help group participants to focus on themselves, not on their problems. The Person-Centered approach will be used to help with current problems. This approach aims towards the client achieve a greater degree of independence and integration (Corey, 2009).

Rationale

The identity of the group participants will be protected by an alias, and all of them receive their correspondence through the Women Against Abuse (WAA) P.O. Box. We will meet in the community area at the shelter, and the sessions will be confidential. Our agreement indicates confidentiality, planned goals, objectives, and a plan of action (see appendix A).

The mission of Women Against Abuse is to provide quality, compassionate, and nonjudgmental services in a manner that fosters self-respect and independence in persons experiencing intimate partner violence and to lead the struggle to end domestic violence through advocacy and community education. This mission focuses on empowering and rebuilding the self-esteem of women who have experienced domestic violence. The group I will be facilitating will be considered a theoretical group because we will be utilizing the Sanctuary Model. It also fits into WAA's mission statement because I will be providing a service that will help build self-respect and independence to participants of the group.

At WAA, women and their children receive three meals a day, group and individual counseling, educational training and activities, after school programming, summer camp, and a nursery. Other services provided in the shelter consist of: adult and child case management, health assessments for adults and children, and emergency relocation. WAA collaborates with three other domestic violence programs that help to run the national 24 hour domestic violence hotline. WAA also offers free legal advocacy and representation in legal matters for both males and females dealing with relationship violence. The Legal Center helps with protection from abuse (PFA) orders, child custody and child support cases, safety planning, legal counseling, and court accompaniment.

WAA also has a long term transitional housing program that provides housing for women from the shelter who are not able to acquire housing on their own. The program provides a family with an apartment for up to 2 years. It has supportive services such as case management, counseling, economic management education, parenting and life skills education, job readiness training, a first time buyer program, nursery, and after school programming.

Goals

Cognitive behavior is one of the problems group participants will be bringing to the sessions, and are defined operationally, which indicate some very specific behaviors. In contrast, the lack of an operational definition usually means that the therapist (facilitator) will rely on inferences about vague traits or labels from the client's statement (Cormier, Nurius, & Osborn, 2009). The initial problems are self-esteem and forming healthy relationship after being abused by husbands or significant others. Listening and observing during previous group meetings generated causal hunches and hypotheses from the information provided by the participants in the sessions. The majority of the participants go from one bad relationship to the next, and lack the skills to communicate positively with their partners when the abuse occurs.

Goals represent desired results or outcomes and functions described by the client, and are growth of the problem identified during the assessment process (Cormier, et al, 2009). I will begin the group by setting goals and explaining why they are needed. In determining the goals, input from each participant is needed in order to set the appropriate goals and objectives. This will give participants choices to achieve a changing outcome. Listening to participants concerns, concepts, and assessments will help to create the path for goals. The contract will outline the Constructive Action, expectations of the facilitator, the role of the group participants, meeting times, dates, confidentiality, goals, objectives, and important highlights. The contract will set the tone of the Constructive Action and allow structure. This provides security and understanding for the facilitator. The contract also outline the protection and promotion of the facilitator's well being, which allows openness and honesty about the rights and options in the Constructive Action. The main stream in the group will be communication.

One goal will be to reduce fear and anxiety associated with domestic violence victims. The second goal is to learn about healthy relationships. The final goal will be to help participants learn to control their anger. In order to accomplish these goals, objectives will be put into place for the possibility of a successful outcome. Relaxation techniques will be introduced to help with the fears and anxiety. Breathing techniques will allow group participants to possess control over their anger and situations when they feel they have no control.

Since I work in the shelter, facilitate a weekly group, and have had contact and communication with the participants on a daily basis we will not need to overcome the trust issue.

I will also be using the method of observation. This means I will be observing what occurs verbally and nonverbally between the participants and me. This will help me to respond to each participant individually, and to the multicultural differences. The goals of this Constructive Action are to