Social Care Self

Professional Practice

Student Name: Adam Fitzsimons

Student Number: X00122979

Lecturer Name: Marian Connell

In the following essay, I am going to discuss the topic of “self” in social care practice, and outline the importance of exploring the “self” and how it benefits both our personal and professional development as social care practitioners.

“Self” can sometimes be seen as a, somewhat, unknown phenomenon in social care practice. People find it hard to define “self” and there can be different interpretations to its meaning. From my learning and understanding of “self”, it is how our internal processes such as our inner thoughts, feelings and emotions affect our external processes by the impact they have on the people we interact with.

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In order for it to work, self-awareness is paramount. It’s also important to realise that when we critically reflect our practice, we are not criticising ourselves.

We all have expectations of ourselves and we want to meet these expectations. By using this model, it is an acknowledgement of the expectations we have of ourselves and the triggers we may have and how we use this to improve our practice.

To conclude, as a social care practitioner, taking care of ourselves is just as important as taking care of the services users that we work with. It’s important to keep physically and mentally fit in order to work at your very best, which is the minimum requirement when working with people who are more vulnerable than ourselves. Whatever it is that we need to take care of ourselves from walking to running to playing football or even meeting a friend for a chat, it’s vitally important to maintain that and take good and appropriate care of ourselves.

Exploring the “self” is massively important in social care practice. Gaining self-awareness allows us to become aware of how our internal processes such as our thoughts and feelings can have an external effect on the people around us, both our colleagues and the service users that we work

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