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Anna Scheyett, The Responsibility of Self-Care in Social Work, Social Work, Volume 66, Issue 4, October 2021, Pages 281–283, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swab041
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Recently my colleague and former editor-in-chief of Social Work, Tricia B. Bent-Goodley (2018), wrote an editorial on the importance of intentional self-care in social work practice. Since that time, self-care has become even more essential for us. We have all been battered by a pandemic, by images and experiences of police violence against Black individuals and communities, by news of the murder of Asian women in Atlanta, by job loss and economic hardship. These experiences are different for each of us, because of our varied positionalities and privilege, and we must acknowledge the profound experiences of racial trauma among social workers who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color (Lipscomb & Ashley, 2020). But since the beginning of 2020, to various extents all of us have been pummeled by pain and fear and loss and rage.
To be effective social work professionals, and effective humans, we need to heal, help each other heal, and intentionally create just and healing contexts. Self-care is an essential part of that healing, and NASW recently emphasized this importance in its revised Code of Ethics (NASW, 2021). In its purpose, the revised Code added: