Building professional resilience in student social workers.
No one ever said it was going to be easy! Social and health care professionals will face emotional pressures within their profession, which comes hand in hand with supporting people in times of difficulty. But, here too lies the job satisfaction in applying professional skills to bring positive changes and even save lives.
Previous research has helped to highlight the impact on social care professionals of occupational stress. For example, a major study by Community Care (2015), in which 2,000 social work staff were interviewed, found that:
- 97 % respondents felt mild to moderately stressed
- 80% of social workers believe stress levels are affecting their ability to do their job.
- 16 % said that they had received no guidance or training on stress
As in all research, there are methodological limitations, such as the self-selective nature of respondents, and the focus on the negativity of the role whilst ignoring the positive aspects of a career in the care profession’s. Nonetheless, the importance of developing emotional resilience has now become embedded in the recently revised Standards of Practice for social workers (HCPC, 2017), which now include the need to:
- Be able to identify and apply strategies to build professional resilience.
It is argued that HEIs teaching social and health care students have an increasing responsibility to respond to this and explore ways of building emotional resilience within the curriculum. In addition to established methods of support, the social work academic staff at Staffordshire University are exploring and developing further means to support our up and coming social work professionals, with new innovations that include:
- A requirement within placement portfolios to demonstrate the use of professional support to cope with dilemmas and challenges
- Targeted lectures with specialist guest speakers
- Improved signposting to student support services
- Guidance and training for practice based educators on student support
- A recent collaboration at a major conference organised by SAGE publications where Fern Basnett was invited to speak on this topic and become involved in future development
Further ideas and suggestions and innovations from across the university on this topic are all welcome – please email me on: F.Basnett@staffs.ac.uk
Fern Basnet, Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Work and Social Welfare, F.Basnett@staffs.ac.uk