Elevating Self-Care in Our Social Work Profession: How Are We Doing?

by Erlene Grise-Owens and J. Jay Miller

     NASW's 2019 Social Work Month theme is Elevate Social Work. Self-care is key for elevating our profession!

Social Work Speaks: Self-Care is “Essential”

     In 2008-2009, as part of “Social Work Speaks,” NASW issued a Policy Statement on Professional Self-Care and Social Work. This Statement should be required reading for social workers!

     This document elevated self-care as “an essential underpinning to best practice in the profession of social work….[and] is critical to the survival and growth of the profession.”  The document further asserted, “Yet professional self-care has not been fully examined or addressed within the profession” (p. 245). The Policy Statement succinctly explicated the rationale for emphasizing self-care.

     The brief, yet crucial, Policy Statement concluded with 11 specific suggestions for the profession.

A Decade Later: How Are We Doing?

     The first two suggestions emphasize the role and responsibility of organizations to implement policies, procedures, and programs that promote wellness cultures. The third and fourth items call for supervisors and administrators to model, support, and promote self-care. How is your workplace fulfilling organizational, supervisory, and administrative responsibility?  What steps could you take to elevate self-care in these facets?

     Next, the Policy Statement specifies that individual professionals should commit to self-care plans. The sixth and seventh items emphasize the need for supports for practitioners in practicing self-care, including continuing education offerings, support groups, professional retreats, and so forth. Do you elevate self-care in your own practice?  Use a self-care plan? What CEUs, networks, and other resources (e.g., this blog!) support your self-care? Could you advocate that our professional organizations promote resources?

     The next two suggestions identify the pivotal role of social work education programs, including the field education component, in socializing new professionals by integrating self-care in curricula. If you are a student, does your program integrate self-care in the curriculum?  If a field supervisor, does the social work program provide training on self-care? If an educator, can you initiate such components and advocate that the Council on Social Work Education require attention to self-care in curricula?

Elevate On!

     Finally, the Policy Statement emphasizes pursuing research on the need for self-care, as well as tools, strategies, and models for effective self-care. Although we’ve made progress, the profession has work to do to “fully examine and address” self-care!  We must elevate self-care through conducting research, reporting on models, and sharing practice examples. We need forums to share information and insights! For instance, we’re co-editing a special issue on self-care for NASW’s Social Work journal.

     This blog is an informal, accessible forum to share our struggles, successes, and strategies. Consider contributing a guest post!

     Use Social Work Month this March to elevate the profession by fulfilling Social Work Speaks’ clarion call to self-care! Ironically, the Policy Statement didn’t explicate professional organizations’ (e.g., NASW) responsibility for promoting self-care. Call on NASW and other professional organizations to elevate self-care and actualize promotion of it. Write about self-care for your organization’s newsletter. Invite team members to institute self-care plans. Attend or conduct a self-care CEU. Share this blog. Elevate Social Work! Join the #selfcaremovement!

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Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens, Ed.D., LCSW, LMFT, 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. You can reach Dr. Grise-Owens at drerlene@gmail.com.

Dr. Jay Miller, Ph.D., MSW, CSW, is the Associate Dean for Research, Associate Professor, Director of the Self-Care Lab, and the Doris Y Wilkinson Distinguished Professor in Social Work Education in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Miller is co-editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals. You can reach Dr. Miller at justin.miller1@uky.edu.