A Study Of Group Work Practices Related To Spiritual Consolation For Empty City Dwellers From An Action Theory Perspective

Population ageing has become an increasingly serious problem in recent years,as the number of older people in the world has grown rapidly.At societal level,they face economic,cultural and political pressures,and at personal level,both psychological and health problems."In the case of the ’urban empty nests’,they gradually drift away from the richness of social life and remain unemployed for long periods,with negative emotions such as loneliness,isolation and even depression depriving them of spiritual solace.In the light of the above,the present study takes as its theme the issue of mental comfort in urban empty nests,analyses the causes of the lack of mental comfort in urban empty nests and explores social work intervention methods to address the problem of mental comfort in urban empty nests.In the present study,the Q-community was chosen as the research site and the elderly living in empty nest as the research object.Questionnaires,semi-structured interviews and observation were used to investigate the current state of mental comfort among the community’s empty-nesters.The study found that there are many problems in the area of spiritual comfort for the elderly living in the Q-community.Analysing the causes of the problems,the main causes were found to be the lack of cultural and recreational opportunities in the community,the elderly’s weak social support network,the weakening of family closeness and the lack of social participation of the empty-nesting elderly.In order to address the above problems,this work uses action theory as a guideline and employs a professional social work approach to select eight residents of the empty nests of the Q-community to form a mental comfort group and to conduct seven group activities to intervene in the mental comfort of the community’s empty nests.Through the group activities and community services,older people were able to unlock the strengths of their group,explore their own potential,expand social channels with others and build social support networks.At the end of the practical activities,the author conducted a summative evaluation and professional reflection on the group work.The results of the analysis and evaluation showed that the activity had achieved the expected objectives,the group members were satisfied with the activity and the group work method was effective in improving the mental well-being of empty people.At the same time,the author found that there were still some shortco分钟gs in the group work.At the end of the article,the author provides personal suggestions to address the problems and shortco分钟gs of the group work,hoping that it will provide guidance for future group work to intervene in improving the mental well-being of empty nesters in the city.