Teaching about selfcare to social work students. A necessary action

ABSTRACT

Learning to take care of oneself in order to be able to take care of others is key to the future of Social Work practice. This article analyzes how self-care is taught to and learned by Social Work students. We approach it through the experiences and discourses of students and professors from the Social Work degree course at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), in Tarragona, Spain. The methodology used was mixed. Data was collected during 2019 through 143 Social Work student online questionnaires, two student focus groups, two in-depth interviews with students, and 13 social work faculty online questionnaires. The results highlight the lack of specific training in self-care and the demands of both groups to have better access to this training. Some proposals to introduce content related to self-care programmatically into Social Work university studies are also presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-care training
• social work education
• self-care
• care
• Spain
• self-knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It is government statutory body established in 2008 to develop national policy relating to WHS and workers’ compensation.

2. Some professors teach at two courses.