Self-Care A-Z: Celebrating World Social Work Day—A “New Eco-Social World” and Self-Care
by Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, and Justin “Jay” Miller, PhD, MSW, CSW
March 15 is World Social Work Day, designated to celebrate the “hard work and diligence of social workers.” The theme for 2022 is Co-Building a New Eco-Social World: Leaving No One Behind. This theme conveys a “vision and action plan to create new global values, policies, and practices…for all people and the sustainability of the planet.”
World Social Work Day “promotes the best practices of social work.” As part of this celebration and commitment to best practices, we want to articulate how care for society and the planet is crucially connected with practitioner self-care.
Eco-Social World and a Meta-Practice Framework
Eco-Social Work emphasizes the need for social workers to promote social justice through vital attention to the symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world. Eco-social work takes a systems perspective, a core approach in social work. This perspective emphasizes the critical impact of interdependence in systemic change. For instance, one core tenet is that change in one part of the system affects the whole system.
Our conceptualization of meta-practice builds on this systems perspective. Meta-practice reframes the traditional micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. In this expansive paradigm, meta-practice revisions practice arenas as interconnected and iterative spaces—rather than hierarchical, disconnected levels. Applying this expansive framework, one’s own well-being is inextricably and iteratively interdependent with larger systems well-being.
Meredith C. F. Powers and Sandra Engstrom, in “Radical Self-Care for Social Workers in the Global Climate Crisis,” describe how social work’s engagement in a justice-focused eco-social world requires self-care. These authors articulate the reverberating impacts of environmental degradation and other environmental injustices—as both arenas of our social work practice and facets of our personal well-being. They conclude, “Through radical self-care we can become people who embrace healing and peace within ourselves—and then we can offer it to others and to our beautiful Mother Earth” (p. 35).
Fractals of Life
Similarly, in Emergent Strategy—Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, adrienne maree brown emphasizes the importance of understanding the key role of fractals in creating systemic change. Fractals are infinitely complex spirals that are ubiquitous throughout creation—from plants to planets. This fractal pattern is powerfully pertinent in co-creating an equitable, just, and sustainable eco-world.
That is, as brown observes: What we practice at the smallest scale sets the patterns for larger systems. What this fractally means in terms of social work is that attention to our own self-care spirals into our work. Then, fractally, this spiral affects the larger eco-world. These fractals of life mean that the sustainability of large-scale change is rooted in the sustainability of the profession, which is interdependent with the individual practitioner’s well-being. It’s just fractal!
Leaving No One Behind
The 2021 theme for World Social Work Day was Ubuntu—I am because we are. As we emphasized in our 2021 post, the collective “we” is comprised of individuals. The interconnectedness of the collective (ubuntu) is most powerful and effective when every “I” in the interconnection is, in turn, connected to ourselves in healthy and caring ways. Engaging in one’s own self-care is perhaps the most immediate, crucial, fractal way to contribute to a new eco-world that’s resilient, caring, and sustainable.
On this annual World Social Work Day (and every day), let’s celebrate the contributions and commitments of our beloved profession. Let’s commit to a vision and plan of action that builds a just world and sustains the planet. Let’s also honor the humanity of the individuals carrying out this laudable profession.
In co-building a new eco-social world, consider the care necessary to sustain the humans tasked with the “hard work and diligence.” Too often in this work, the practitioner’s own well-being is sacrificed for the purported greater good. Attention to the social worker’s own human-ness is forgotten in the building process. Lacking this foundational consideration, the process is not sustainable nor humane.
Leaving no one behind means emphasizing that each and every social worker is somebody and, fractally, everybody. Leaving no one behind requires a vision and action plan that encompasses practitioners—both as part of the work and as human beings in our own rights. Leaving no one behind compels taking self-care seriously, as an essential best practice in co-building a new eco-social world.
Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, 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.
Dr. J. Jay Miller, PhD, MSW, CSW, is the Dean, Dorothy A. Miller Research Professor in Social Work Education, and Director of the Self-Care Lab in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. You can follow his work via Twitter @DrJayMiller1.