Developing emotional resilience in social work students: supporting effective reflective practitione

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Developing emotional resilience in social work
studentssupporting effective reflective
practitioners

• Louise Grant
• Gail Kinman
• University of Bedfordshire

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Resilience

• The general capacity for flexible and
  resourceful adaptation to external and internal
  stressors
• (Klohen, 1996)

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Social work and stress

• Job is seen as satisfying, but stressful
• Stress is a particular problem for trainees
• Stress is related to sickness absence and
  impaired performance in social workers
• Perceptions of job as stressful related to
  recruitment and retention problems in UK
• Concerns about stress resilience of newly
  qualified staff by social work managers

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A need for resilient social workers 1

• Social workers need to develop the emotional
  resilience to manage the challenges they will
  face
• (Laming, 2009)
• .the most troubling and intractable situations
  exist when performance difficulties occur in the
  context of staff who lack accurate empathy, self
  awareness and self management skills
• (Morrison, 2007)

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A need for resilient social workers 2

• Experience from practice and education
• Need for enhanced coping ability to deal with
  reactions of the heart
• Training in resilience likely to be beneficial
• Curriculum mainly content driven - little focus
  on emotions and building resilience
• Benefits for social workers enhanced wellbeing
• Benefits for SUs enhanced job performance
• Research required to inform curriculum and
  develop support mechanisms

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Resilience building the foundations

• Q. What are the individual factors that underlie
  resilience, successful coping and wellbeing?
• A. Our view is
• Emotional intelligence and reflective ability
• enhance resilience to stress?
• foster wellbeing?
• are key qualities for social workers who fly?

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Emotional intelligence and reflective ability

• Emotional intelligence
• Evaluation and expression of emotion emotional
  regulation the use of emotions in decision
  making
• Inter- and intra-personal aspects
• Reflective ability
• Self reflection, empathetic reflection and
  reflective communication

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Aims and objectives of research

• To develop interventions to enhance resilience
  and wellbeing in social work students
• To gain insight into students understanding of
  resilience and why it is important
• To examine emotional intelligence and reflective
  ability as predictors of resilience and wellbeing
  in student social workers
• To explore ways in which reflective practice
  might enhance resilience and how the social work
  curriculum might support this

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Methodology

• Content analysis of data from Wellbeing Days
  what is resilience and why is it important for
  social workers?
• Cross-sectional questionnaire study to examine
  emotional intelligence and reflective ability as
  predictors of resilience and wellbeing
• An examination via content analysis of student
  perceptions and experiences during placements is
  underway
• Semi structured interviews
• Reflective accounts

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Students views of resilience what is it and
why is it important?

• The ability to manage oneself so that stress and
  pressures of work and life do not affect ones
  wellbeing and the ability to cope and survive
  regardless of pressures
• To build up a protection within yourself to help
  deal with issues that may be challenging to me
  and the person I am working with
• To enable you to cope and manage complex issues
  effectively. It enables professionals to work in
  a more competent way to still be able to
  function and support others without it impacting
  on your own ability to look after yourself

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Predictors of resilience and wellbeing

• Sample
• 240 social work students (69 L1, 31 L2)
• 82 female, age range 19 53
• 78 UK nationals
• 68 previous experience in care roles
• Measures
• Reflective ability (Aukes et al., 2007)
• Emotional intelligence (Schutte et al., 1997)
• Resilience (Wagnild Young, 1993)
• Psychological wellbeing (Goldberg Williams,
  1987)
• Physical health (single item)

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Results

• 43 achieved scores indicative of caseness
  levels of psychological distress
• Social work students were more resilient and less
  distressed if they
• were more emotionally intelligent (plt.001)
• had stronger reflective abilities (empathetic
  reflection, reflective communication and self
  reflection) (plt.001)
• strongest predictor was ability for self
  reflection
• Empathetic reflection positive, but high
  empathy without empathetic reflection negative

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Results mediation analysis

• Evidence that those who are more emotionally
  intelligent are more resilient to stress which,
  in turn, impacts on wellbeing

Emotional intelligence
Psychological and physical health
Resilience
Full mediation demonstrated Psychological health
(from r -.29, plt.001 to r .07, non
sign.) Physical health (from r -.19, plt.01 to r
-.10, non sign.)
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Interviews

• Reflection on placement experiences
  satisfaction and stress?
• Examples of positive and negative emotion
  management during placement
• Support utilised and particularly valued
• To what extent has training helped manage
  feelings?
• Areas for further development
• Preliminary findings emotional control is
  synonymous with being professional fears about
  emotional disclosure

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Reflective accounts

• Asked to reflect on experiences with service user
  that had a particular emotional impact on them
• The role of emotional containment in reflective
  practice was emphasised (Ruch, 2007)
• Preliminary findings
• Service users have considerable emotional impact
  positive and negative
• Emotion management is under-explored
• Students benefit from discussing emotion and
  reflecting upon this with peers, but have
  concerns about opportunities to do so post
  qualification

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Conclusions

• Levels of psychological distress high in social
  work students
• Recognition of what resilience is and why it is
  important, BUT recognise a need to develop better
  coping strategies
• Emotional intelligence and reflection are key
  qualities in successful emotion management
• Developing these abilities should enhance
  resilience leading to improved wellbeing
• Facilitating empathetic reflection will also be
  beneficial

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How can we enhance the curriculum?

• How can knowledge gained be applied to support
  students development?
• from the outset, emphasise the value of
  reflection as a self protective mechanism
• a more explicit focus on emotion management
• help students identify good practice and areas
  for improvement
• expose students to different stress coping
  strategies during Wellbeing Days encompassing
  cognitive, social support, relaxation and
  practical skills

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Future plans

• Diagnostic questionnaires and supportive teaching
  and learning sessions
• E learning
• Complete and analyse interviews
• Expand on Wellbeing Days drawing on student
  feedback
• Use of peer coaching techniques