Conclusion

This free course, Supporting and developing resilience in social work , has given you an opportunity to review and develop your emotional resilience skills, through examining processes, structures and strategies which support this.

You have been encouraged to take a critical approach to understanding professionalism, and considered the benefits of a strong and positive professional identity to support personal and collective resilience. You also considered the importance of supervision, in enhancing your capacity to work with the emotional challenges of social work.

This free course includes adapted extracts from the course Critical Social Work Practice. If you are interested in this subject and want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in Social work [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

• Social work is an emotionally challenging job and social workers need to develop a repertoire of skills and strategies to enable them to be resilient and provide the best possible service.
• Regular, reflective supervision supports emotional resilience and professional development: social workers have the right to request it, and they also need to share responsibility through good preparation and being open to discussion and feedback.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course K315 Social work practice .

You may also be interested in the free OpenLearn course Developing career resilience . You can earn a free digital badge on completion of this course.