Importance Of Personal Self

In social care, we work with some of society’s most vulnerable people. For a practitioner to best support an individual they must first be able to care for themselves. It is important to be aware of who we are, our strengths and our areas for improvement. This can directly affect the relationships and experiences we have with ourselves, clients, and our peers in social care practice. For this assignment, we will look at the importance of ‘the self’ and personal and professional development in social care.
The self can be defined as ‘an organised, consistent set of perceptions of and beliefs about oneself.’ (Passer, Smith, Holt, Bremner, Sutherland & Vliek, 2009, p676). We should aim to understand ourselves, learn know how we function and what

It is important to continue to grow and develop personally and professionally. It can make us aware of our strengths and weaknesses and so conscious of what needs to be developed and improved upon. This is an ongoing process throughout our lives. According to (Day, Halpin & Zaccaro, 2004, cited by Share & Lalor, 2009, p123) for ‘self-development to occur, a person needs to become aware of his/her internal processes {thoughts, feelings, moods, beliefs and actions} and have an awareness of how these internal processes impact on others as an external process. (Share & Lalor, 2009, p123) Self-awareness and self-development work hand in hand with one another, as do personal and professional development. ‘Conscious bringing into awareness of a greater understanding of both who, and how, we are in the world is known as the process of personal development.’ (Parfitt, 2006 as cited by Share & Lalor, 2009, p233) By actively working on our self-development we can advance and progress and not be stuck at a certain point. ‘The social care worker is not practising to his or her full potential if they are not engaged in awareness and development of the self.’ (Share & Lalor, 2009, p123) Winter 2009,(cited by Fenton 2016), states that ‘self-awareness, self-management and self-care are critical elements of emotional and professional competence.’

(Howard & Lyons, 2014, p152) Being able to reflect on an experience including how you responded or felt and how you might do things differently if it were to happen again can help us to work through such situations. This can involve looking back and asking questions such as, ‘why did I feel like that?’ and ‘was there something I could do differently if it happened again? ‘Boud (2001 as cited by Moore et al 2011, p545) ‘describes reflection as the process of turning experience into learning that involves making sense out of what has occurred in our lives.’ Reflection can also be useful in terms of learning from experience and so help towards self-care and self-development. ‘Reflective skill is described as an ability to identify personal errors and make evidence-based decisions. Self-awareness and reflective skills are closely related in which self-reflection involves learning processes, whereas self-awareness becomes the objective of the process.’ (Siraj, Salam, Azmina, Chong, Saidatul, Faiz, Murnira, Kang & Nabishah, 2013,