1.7 Practice
- Journal Prompt: What are you looking forward to as you begin your internship? What are your concerns? What are some ways you can apply an equity lens to your experience?
- Self-Care Activity: The importance of self-care when caring for others. Self-care is a major concern for people working in human services. Working with people who are experiencing problems can be rewarding, but it also can be exhausting and frustrating. Many of the issues we help clients with involve complicated solutions across several different services or agencies. The rate of turnover tends to be very high in the field due to factors including the unpredictability of the daily work, the ever-changing landscape of funding and service guidelines, and the frustration caused by the difficulty in getting things done.
We feel that self-care is a critical element for workers to be able to continue to do the work we love without feeling burned out. In this text we end each chapter with a different self-care activity. Our hope is that while you are still an intern you can begin to develop the habit of regular and ongoing self-care. Attending to your own needs is an important part of your professional training.
Self-care looks different for everyone. I may enjoy hiking to unwind, while someone else prefers a cup or tea and a good book. We supply different suggestions throughout the text—use the ones that work for you, and modify or ignore the ones that don’t feel like a good match. Our hope is that by the end of your internship you will have a “toolbox” of self-care skills to take with you into the field.
For this chapter, we ask you to compile a list of the activities you do now to help you destress and get back to a feeling of balance. Focus on activities that help you clear your mind, and avoid activities that can lead to future difficulties, such as drinking or smoking. You can put this list in your journal, or post it somewhere to remind you to take the time to take care of yourself. The activities in this book should help you expand that list. Chapter 5 discusses the importance of self-care in more detail.
- Class Discussion: Discuss your list of self-care activities, either as a class or in small groups. Add activities that other classmates mention that you would like to try.
- Class Discussion: Discuss using an equity framework. What does this mean to you, and how do you think this applies to your agency?
- Class Discussion: Look back at the case studies of Diego, Lisa, and Jing. How can you apply their experiences to yours? What theories do you think will be most appropriate for the agency you will be interning?
- Class Discussion: How can you use the CSHSE Fieldwork Standards to guide your internship experience?
1.7.1 Licenses and Attributions for Practice
“Activities” by Yvonne M. Smith LCSW is licensed under CC BY 4.0.