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Trauma response teams are now found within most communities and many emergency service organizations. They provide a range of services to emergency response workers, their organizations and their communities, and are now viewed as essential parts of almost every emergency preparedness plan. In order for these teams to be effective however, it is vital that considerable preparation and effort go into the design of the team, articulation of team mandate and functions, selection and training of team members, and the ongoing maintenance and administration of the team. This chapter includes guidelines on recruitment, team training, team deployment, and objectives. The responsibilities of the team members at various events are at different stages of the disaster are also outlined. Finally, the chapter provides a model for team training that includes team building, discussions about boundaries and ethics, effective listening, individual assessment skills, and groupwork skills.

This chapter discusses the importance of groupwork when dealing with bereaved children. Bereavement can lead a child to become isolated from his/her peers, and usually bereaved children believe that they don't think that anyone else in their school knows and understands exactly what they are going through. Groups for the bereaved at any age can have a significant role in providing support to those members who feel that they are all alone and isolated after someone they knew and loved died. The discussion in this chapter also looks at different models of groupwork that come from several psychotherapeutic traditions.

Media coverage of ‘trans children’ has dramatically increased over the past years. This may be due to a heightening awareness about the issue. Indeed between 2.3% to 8.3%, engage in varying degrees of cross-gender dress and behaviour, and that a small number of them will end up following through with gender change interventions later on in their lives. Few options exist to support the needs of those children. This is alarming since they form a particularly vulnerable group, especially as targets for “gendered harassment” in schools and self-harm, including suicide. This chapter will explore how the Social Action Methodology allows for data collection while addressing problems, taking action for change, and empowering specific groups of participants, in that case, parents, educators and professionals working with “trans children”. What is distinctive about the methodology is that it is lead by the Self-Directed Groupwork a Social Work method, out of which data emerges as a secondary but important and effective outcome. As such it takes forward ideas of participatory action research beyond an emphasis on involving research subject as co-participants in the research process to affect change in their communities.

This chapter contains a biography of Robin Huws Jones, a leader in British social work education, who was awarded the Katherine Kendall Award of the International Association of Schools of Social Work in 1996, for his contribution to international social work education. After early academic posts in adult education and social studies, he became first Director of the National Institute for Social Work Education (UK) and later Associate Director, Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust. For several years, he organised courses in England for African social welfare administrators. He led a major social development project in the valleys of south Wales and courses for social welfare administrators in third world countries. Contributing to the development of groupwork and community work in the UK, he was a successful fundraiser for many ventures, also achieving influence on social policy in a range of fields.