Experiential Learning Course
Adapted
from writings in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Updated Nov. 2014.
MAJOR
RESOURCE
Mutual
Help Groups and Peer to Peer Support Groups Practical Wisdom - Practical Action
refer www.laceweb.org.au/pp020.pdf
A Course
evolved from experience of people helping themselves and each other using
personal, small group, large group, as well as community processes for gaining
and sustaining wellness.
Course Process:
Participants engage in
experiential learning in structured experiences and role play
Course Outcomes
Participants will have
experience in:
o Participating
in self-help and mutual-help
o Identifying
pre-existing local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Establishing
rapport with mutual-helpers and mutual-help networks
o Supporting
and enabling local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Strengthening
informal mutual-help networks
o Supporting
networking of networks
o Evolving
a culture of Self-help and Mutual-help within Organizations
o Evolving
Enabling Environments within self-help and mutual-help
Day One Themes:
o Participating
in self-help and mutual-help
o Identifying
pre-existing naturally occurring local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Establishing
rapport with mutual-helpers and mutual-help networks
Day Two Themes:
o Establishing
rapport with mutual-helpers and mutual-help networks
o Supporting
and enabling local mutual-help and mutual-help networks
o Supporting & strengthening informal mutual-help
networks
Day Three Themes:
o Sustaining
a mutual-help enabler role
o Complementary
ways for Interfacing service delivery and mutual-help processes
o Supporting
people strengthening their own agency – their own self-help
Day Four Themes:
o Enabling
Environments
o Evolving
a culture of Self-help and Mutual-help within Organizations
o Evolving
Enabling Environments within self-help and mutual-help
Day Five Themes:
o
Integrating all of the experiences
READINGS:
MUTUAL-HELP AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON
Some features of the mutual-help
phenomenon:
1. It’s
already present as a little noticed phenomenon
2. No
one is ‘running’ it
3. There’s
no ‘organization’ to ‘join’ as a ‘member’
4. Those
involved typically don’t notice that they are involved
5. It
is self-organizing
6. Nurturing
ways that work are widely available within the phenomenon
7. Often,
folk engaged in self-help and mutual-help are natural nurturers (naturally good
at nurturing)
8. Networking
among self-helpers and mutual-helpers is a naturally occurring phenomenon
9. What
works tends to be passed on during networking
10. Mutual-help
is a bio-psychological, bio-social and bio-cultural phenomenon
11. It
is a phenomenon present across the cultures in the SE Asia Oceania Australasia
Region and wider afield
12. In
mutual-help, there tends to be bio-cultural universals
within cultures, bio-social variation
within societies and bio-psychological differences
between people (this from an eleven country feedback in 2004)
13. Mutual-help
tends to happen as appropriate to context
14. Mutual-help
has a self-help quality to it
15. People
receive reciprocal psycho-emotional benefits from mutual-help
16. Mutual-helpers
maybe, and typically are, experiencing similar stressors
17. Mobile
phone calls and messaging may support the mutual-help processes
18. People
do not receive financial reward for their mutual-helping
19. It
differs substantially from service
delivery in a number of respects
20. Evaluating
takes place constantly as an inherent aspect of mutual-help
21. Mutual-help
may be perceived as a threat by
Service Delivery people
22. It
can in some contexts be the best support that people receive
23. Mutual-helpers
have authentic authority not
zero-sum authority; as in, if I have more authority you have less
24. Service
Delivery bodies may provide a local-lateral linking role in supporting
mutual-help – refer Government and
Facilitating Grassroots Action and Complementary Ways.
Regarding point
22, a commonly reported statement from fire-affected people following the
Victorian 2009 bush-fires in Australia was that one of their most pressing
emotional needs was to find out about whether others they knew in the fire
affected areas had died or being injured or had survived and where they were.
Typically, the best and only source was other fire-affected people.
This phenomenon
of checking on people’s wellbeing and location continued for many months
afterwards and other locals were the best informers. This aspect of local
mutual-help networking was extensive and largely unnoticed by professional
service delivery people.
Another commonly
reported statement was that the most
beneficial psycho-emotional support they received was, again, from other
fire-affected people.
A common
expression was ‘only those who went through it and who are going through it can
possible understand what I am going through’.
With every
respect, another commonly reported statement was that the mutual-support they
receive from other fire-affected people was far better than what was provided
by professional support people.
Mutual Help Pioneers in Australia
An Australian
community psychiatrist Dr Neville
Yeomans was one of a few pioneers around the world action researching the
healing potency of mutual-help.
Dr Yeomans commenced his research
in 1958 and carried out action research till his death in 2000.
Differences
between Service Delivery and Mutual-Help
‘Environment’ is a very
different phenomenon in service delivery contexts compared to mutual-help
contexts.
While enabling values may be similar, enabling of enabling
environments may differ considerably in these two contexts. People engaged
in mutual-help typically do it as an integral aspect of every-day life as they
randomly meet and spontaneously engage with others. At times they may
pre-arrange link ups. When engaged in mutual-help they are typically immersed
in the moment and have no framing of the moment as ‘doing mutual-help’.
Mutual-help has little or nothing to do with integral aspects of
typically service delivery.
Mutual-help has little or nothing to do with:
o
Accountability
o
Advocacy
o
Aspirational expectations
o
Assessment
o
Being a volunteer
o
Career
o
Centralized policy – rather organic policy is that which
works
o
Clinical viewpoints
o
Competency
o
Delegation
o
Development
o
Diagnosis
o
Disease prevention
o
Documentation
o
Economics
o
Fund acquittal
o
Funds
o
Income
o
Leadership
o
Liability
o
Malfunction
o
Management
o
Measurement
o
Models
o
Plans
o
Politics
o
Prescription
o
Problems
o
Problem solving
o
Professional indemnity
o
Quality
o
Risk management
o
Science
o
Scientific evidence
o
Service
o
Solutions
o
Steps
o
Structure
o
Systems
o
Teams
o
Treatment
o
Treatment Plans
o
Work
Self-help and mutual-help are very alive, well and vibrant as a social
phenomenon in the SE Asia Oceania Australasia
Region and perhaps throughout the world.
Resonant Links:
o Wellnet
o Interfacing
Alternative and Complementary Well-being Ways for Local Wellness
o
Government and
Facilitating Grassroots Action
o
Laceweb - Community Ways for Healing
the World
o
Recognising and Evolving
Local-lateral Links Between Various Support Processes
o
The Fastest Growing New Social Movement on the Planet
o
Sociograms
- Figures
Depicting the Evolving of Healing Networks in East Asia Oceania Australasia
o
Evolving a Dispersed Urban Wellbeing
Community