Celebrate March - Social Work Month - by Leading, Advocating, and Championing Self-Care
by Erlene Grise-Owens, Ed.D., LCSW, MSW, MRE, lead co-editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals
The 2018 theme for Social Work Month (in March) is: Leaders. Advocates. Champions. My 2017 March Social Work Month blog post articulated the need for social work to emphasize self-care as a professional priority. Building on that emphasis, how can social work lead, advocate, and champion self-care?
Certainly, individual practitioners play a primary (micro) role in our self-care. However, social workers know the importance of a systemic approach. Agencies, educational programs, and professional organizations (mezzo and macro) also have pivotal roles.
Here’s how macro, mezzo, and micro entities can lead, advocate, and champion self-care.
Agencies have particular responsibility for systemic attention to self-care. Administrators can lead in developing organizational wellness initiatives. For example, organizations can make self-care and wellness explicit components of their strategic plans. All members of organizations can advocate that attention to self-care and wellness be integral to agency culture. While administrators and supervisors have certain responsibility and authority, any member of an organization can champion self-care in an individual unit or broader agency. Some agencies formalize this role through designating and training “self-care champions” throughout the organization.
Educational Programs socialize new practitioners into the profession by inculcating values, teaching skills, and promulgating knowledge. Thus, the educational curricula convey essentials for competent practice. As such, social work education can lead in promoting self-care as a core component of professional practice. Faculty can advocate for curricula to integrate the value of self-care—and knowledge and skills for enacting self-care. Social work education can champion integration of self-care in curricula through promoting models, frameworks, and best practices for preparing practitioners adept in self-care.
Professional Organizations (e.g., NASW and others) promote the profession and support members of that profession. These organizations must be attuned to the profession’s identity and purpose, as well as ascertain what is needed to sustain the profession. Thus, these organizations can lead by emphasizing self-care as a professional priority. They can advocate by advancing policies and practices that promote self-care. They can champion self-care through offering resources to support the development of self-care—such as funding, trainings, materials, and so forth.
Individual Practitioners can lead, advocate, and champion our own self-care, which includes intentionally developing skills for self-care. More broadly, organizations, educational programs, and professional organizations are comprised of individuals. As members of these entities, we can lead, advocate, and champion for systemic attention to self-care.
All of us have a role and responsibility. An overarching aspect of leading, advocating, and championing self-care is building the knowledge base and practice commons. We need forums to share challenges, ideas, information, strategies, models, and research. The New Social Worker is a leader in advancing self-care and provides forums, including publications and the Self-Care A-Z blog.
And, The New Social Worker is emphasizing self-care this Social Work Month with a Self-Care Well-Shop webinar. I hope you will participate with us in this live event on March 21, 2018, at 1 p.m. EDT.
Also, I am excited to share that NASW’s journal, Social Work, recently released a call for papers on the topic of self-care. Want to submit a manuscript for this special issue? If you have ideas or questions you want to discuss, please email me.
Celebrate Social Work Month! Join the self-care movement! Lead, Advocate, and Champion Self-Care!
Peace, Love, and Self-Care,
Erlene
Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens, Ed.D., LCSW, MSW, MRE is a Partner in The Wellness Group, ETC. This LLC provides evaluation, training, and consultation for organizational wellness and practitioner well-being. Dr. Grise-Owens is lead editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals. As a former faculty member and graduate program director, she and a small (but mighty!) group of colleagues implemented an initiative to promote self-care as part of the social work education curriculum. Previously, she served in clinical and administrative roles. She has experience with navigating toxicity and dysfunction, up-close and personal! Likewise, as an educator, she saw students enter the field and quickly burn out. As a dedicated social worker, she believes the well-being of practitioners is a matter of social justice and human rights. Thus, she is on a mission to promote self-care and wellness!