Group facilitation: Grocery shopping

            For my second group leadership experience, I did my group session on grocery shopping. I chose this because it is something that I feel like I sometimes struggle with doing efficiently. Throughout the process of designing this group protocol, I changed and reorganized the details of the group many times. I feel like having to redo or change my initial protocol helped me to think through the session more fully and helped me to embrace how a group structure can be easily altered. 

            For my warm up activity, I chose to ask each group member to draw their favorite food and then had the other group members guess what their favorite food is. This portion of the group was to warm up the group and to get the interactions flowing. I initially thought that seeing what people’s guesses were would be interesting and that they would probably be incorrect. I was wrong. All the pictures were guessed within a few moments of seeing them. There was one picture that if everyone had not already known her favorite food would have taken a few minutes to guess. 

            The next part of my activity was handing out the individual meals that each person was going to identify the ingredients of and find the coupons/ads to go along with. I did not give the group members all the instructions for the activity in the beginning because I wanted their lists to be comprehensive and how they would make it rather than using the items in the ads to determine the ingredients that they would choose. Once each of the group members were done doing making their list and removing their coupons, I asked them to go around, tell their food and read the different items that they said would be necessary. I explained the purpose behind only focusing on the ingredients for one meal at a time. The purpose behind this was to depict how this activity would be done with someone with a cognitive deficit. This would provide the clients with a small, measurable, and attainable goal. 

            After going over the different meal’s ingredients, I asked the group to come together and to make a large list of the meals for the “week”. This was simulating someone with cognitive issues combining their individual meal list into their grocery shopping. I did not get the group instructions on how to combine the list because I wanted to see how they would decide to organize the list naturally. The group decided to go around and reread the things that were on their list and for when something was said once for them to mark off the items on the following member’s list. Once all the items were listed, I asked to see the paper and looked at the order of the list. I mentioned to the group how the randomly ordered list could be confusing and cause distress to someone with a cognitive difficulty, seeing as how it even makes shopping difficult for those of us without a cognitive impairment. 

            I handed the paper back and asked the group to categorize the groups by things that would be found together, not necessarily in order but just together. The group started out trying to figure out how the items would be found from the entrance of the store. I had not intended to step in or give any advice/input in this part of the activity, but for someone with cognitive difficulties I felt like going through the grocery store mentally could be a difficult task. I reminded them that they did not have to be in any order, just categories. The group decided to have one member marking the items that would be together while the others were giving their input. Once this was done, I asked for the list back and asked the group which of the lists that they would rather go to the store with. Each person said that they would rather go with the list that was grouped by location that the list that was in a random order. 

            Throughout each portion of the group session, I was taking notes on the group member that I had decided to write my S.O.A.P. note on and other notes on how the group session was progressing. I feel like the group went very well and was structured just the right amount. I allowed for there to be some flexibility and freedom during the tasks, while also having control and keeping them focused on the task at hand. I felt like this was appropriate for this group population because it allowed for there to be social interaction, trust to be gained, and for the group members to work together. Coming into the group, I was nervous because I did not have a precedent for how the individually lead group sessions would go. I was also nervous for fear of forgetting something that was essential to the flow of the group or saying something that I should not say. Through the entire process of individually leading a group, I have learned something about myself. I have learned that I need to be more assertive and more confident in my knowledge and experiences.