Co-creating an inclusive self-care curriculum to enhance wellbeing and learning for social work students

School:  Social and Political Science

Team Members: Pearse McCusker, Autumn Roesch-March, Mary Mitchell, Sarah Rose

Abstract

Self-care skills are vitally important for students during their education and in transitioning into emotionally and cognitively demanding roles such as in social work. Studies indicate that mental health issues, including stress are significant problems for social work students and social workers. Despite this, self-care has not been incorporated systematically into social work curriculums across Higher Education. This participatory action research (PAR) project aims to work with students, academics, University of Edinburgh (UoE) and external partners to develop an understanding of theory and approaches to self-care in order to integrate a curriculum of self-care across social work programmes at UoE. It will connect with related UoE activity on student mental health and wellbeing and have application in other subjects, particularly those with practice/fieldwork elements and exposure to vicarious trauma. The precise nature of the programme will be determined during the project but it is likely to involve a series of cumulative inputs and learning  experiences, in order to develop skills and understanding for greater self-care and explore how it may enhance learning. The programme will integrate self-care within the content and assignments for academic and practice learning courses. Importantly, as self-care requires safe spaces to explore concepts of self, we will apply an ‘intersectional’ lens, recognising that students come from diverse backgrounds and identify in different ways. In doing so, we aim to develop a self-care curriculum that is broad, inclusive and reflects social work’s core values regarding equality and social justice.