Self-care

This final chapter is concerned with self-care as social workers. Highlighting the emotive and stressful work social workers undertake and the impacts of this on us personally whilst pointing out these oft unhelpful them/us narrative. I discuss the issue of burn out and vicarious trauma and propose some ideas around self-care we can implement ourselves but importantly what our employing organisations could also do. I outline some reticence around the rhetoric around self-care as it can position us as the issue instead of the wider systemic issues impacting. I also discuss the mental health first aider training programme with some critique and suggestion of an alternative model – emotional first aid.