ABSTRACT
I will now allow myself to use this opportunity to share with you how my frame of reference for working with groups and group care has developed. My guiding principles, or rays of light for this jour ney have been lit by several people. Alan Paton's statement in Cry, the Beloved Country, underlining the fundamentals of human digni ty-that to mean something and belong someplace is the greatest wish/need a person can have-is a dear remembrance from my fIrst classes in social group work with Gisela Konopka. Synergy, that of bringing together the strength and resources of people in a com bined effort to create a viable thrust and forceful, enriched base and quality for change and movement forward, is an influence from a
year spent at the School of Applied Social Science, Grace Coyle 's home base at Case Western Reserve University, with Paul Abels. The importance in group work and residential work of doing things together, called activity, and the idea and reality of creating some thing with others I owe to Ruth Middleman. For understanding the importance of ending groups the best way, I am in debt to Helen Northen, through her ever-classical chapter on this topic, a required reading in the 1 970s. In understanding, knowing, and applying developmental concepts into practice in group care, Henry Maier has lit the way for me. Thank you all very much!
