Self-Care and the Social Worker: Taking Our Place in the Code

Abstract

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics helps us navigate our way through the complex interaction of roles, responsibilities, and relationships in the services we provide. The 2017 revision of the code updated our standards to better fit within 21st-century technology and culture. However, our code has one major weakness: It places maximum emphasis on the wellness of clients and minimal guidance on the importance of wellness for the people who serve. The code states that “social workers elevate service to others above self-interest” (NASW, 2017, p. 5). This suggests that our wellness is not as important as the wellness of those we serve. Social workers are the most important players in the profession; without the server, there is no service. There is an inconsistency between the Professional Self-Care and Social Work policy statement in Social Work Speaks (NASW, 2018) and our code, regarding self-care. The policy statement states that “the critical key to prevention and management of adverse conditions such as stress, burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress of vicarious trauma is the practice of self-care” (p. 257). However, our NASW Code of Ethics only focuses on what to do after impairment is reached. For example, section 4.05(b) states that we should seek help when our personal problems impact our work. The focus of this standard is on intervention, as opposed to prevention of impairment. This is an issue that our profession must resolve: the dissonance between what we know to be true about our value and how our value is reflected in our organizational standards. Addressing wellness of social workers in the code would help to better align our code with the policy statement about self-care (NASW, 2018).

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