The Application Study Of Group Work In Improving The Psychological Problems Of Families Who Lost Only Child

Since the one-child policy was carried out in the 1980s, the amount of families who lost their only child gains everyday and becomes a huge social group. For those families, the death of the child breaks the normal structure of the family, even more serious is the tremendous psychological injury it brings. Their mental state is not optimistic. As one of the cities that well carried out the one-child policy, the city of Taicang has more than 300 families who lost their only child, which has a negative impact on the harmonious and stable development of the city.A project which cares the families lost their only child named "Hand-in-hand, Share the sunshine" is one of Taicang’s wining projects of venture philanthropy in 2014. This study established groups based on the project, and take the psychological support group in Town C (one of the towns that the project was put into implement) as the research object. I investigated the mental health of parents who lost their only child by ways of interviews and questionnaires. After that, a series of group activities was designed and implemented according to the actual needs and specialties of these service targets. These activities are named as "Meeting new friends" "Pouring out your emotion" "Looking forward together" "We are here to help you" "What’s your hobby" and "A journey of healing". This group provides these special families a platform to communicate with each other, by means of interaction between group members and professional guidance from social worker, which enhances the peer support between these parents and helps building optimistic mood. And finally achieves the goal of improving their psychological problems such as depression, loneliness and isolation.This study shows that group work has the unique advantage in the improvement of psychological problems of the families that lost their only child. It makes group members easier to understand and support each other with their same experience, to promote experience sharing and emotional exchanges, which in other working methods like case work can not compare with. However, through the assessment of the whole group process, there are still some limits and disadvantages need to be improved in the implement of group work of families who lost their only child.