Mostly yes, the group stays together. We run road or trail not track. No one is really serious about pace and time, or if you are you treat group runs as social time and do your own thing later.
One group just meets at the start, people go off and do their own thing and then come back to the start for coffee at a cafe. That way everyone from walkers to people doing a long run can all hang out afterwards but not actually run together.
The best are trail runs with 8-10 people, you end up walking the hills and take a short break every 5-10 minutes so you can chat with almost everyone over the hour you're out there.
I think https://csprimer.com/courses/ is a good fit if you also want community. I think Oz Nova who is behind csprimer was one of the authors of teach yourselfcs
