The Role and Responsibility of Social Work Education in Promoting Practitioner Self-Care

ABSTRACT

The profession of social work faces a perfect storm of increasingly complex practice contexts, intensifying demands, and escalating burnout. This crisis requires immediate, critical, and substantive action by social work education. Social work programs function to prepare competent practitioners who can navigate these demands and complexities with efficacy, while sustaining themselves. For too long, practitioner well-being has been significantly neglected. This article promotes a basic tenet: Social work education has a pivotal responsibility and pragmatic role in providing serious, credible attention to the well-being of practitioners. Social work curricula must integrate teaching of self-care as a professional competency. This article provides philosophical rationale and practical strategies for doing so. Through comprehensive attention in implicit and explicit curricula, social work programs can prepare practitioners who can enact social work’s long-standing mission of human rights, social justice, and human well-being. Everyone (e.g., faculty, field supervisors, administrators) has a role and responsibility. The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has particular effect in setting standards for social work programs, and, by extension, the profession itself. Thus, the article concludes with a call for CSWE to include self-care in the accreditation standards core competencies required by all social work programs. The profession’s future compels taking proactive, preventative action now.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erlene Grise-Owens

Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, writes, presents, and consults about organizational wellness and self-care. Dr. Grise-Owens is a Partner in The Wellness Group, ETC. J. Jay Miller, PhD, MSW, CSW, is Dean and Dorothy A. Miller Research Professor of Social Work Education in the College of Social Work at University of Kentucky. Also, Dr. Miller is the founding director of the Self-Care Lab.

J. Jay Miller

Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, writes, presents, and consults about organizational wellness and self-care. Dr. Grise-Owens is a Partner in The Wellness Group, ETC. J. Jay Miller, PhD, MSW, CSW, is Dean and Dorothy A. Miller Research Professor of Social Work Education in the College of Social Work at University of Kentucky. Also, Dr. Miller is the founding director of the Self-Care Lab.