Hearts and Minds: Aspects of Empathy and Wellbeing in Social Work Students

The role of empathy in case management: a pilot study

“…This result suggests that proficient decision-making is incompatible with the propensity to experience emotional distress in the face of another person's predicament. The finding thus seems to accord with studies highlighting the value of emotion management; for example, the importance of reflective abilities for tempering empathic distress (Grant, 2014), and perhaps also of mindfulness for controlling impulsivity and reactivity in relations with service users (Napoli & Bonifas, 2011). It fundamentally seems to point to the benefit of a level-headed approach in balancing the vicarious experience of another person's emotions and the reflective effort needed to understand his/her situation, as one way of preventing the professional hazards of compassion fatigue and burnout (Coyle, Edwards, Hannigan, Fothergill, & Burnard, 2005;Fahy, 2007).…”

“…To date, there is published work on the role of emotional competencies for stress management in social work (Kinman & Grant, 2011) as well as research on teaching empathy-related skills, such as mindfulness (Grant, 2014;Napoli & Bonifas, 2011) and emotion management (Hen & Goroshit, 2011), to social work students. There is, however, to our knowledge no research specifically examining the interplay that presumably exists between the various aspects of empathy and decision-making with regard to how to intervene in service user cases.…”

“…In recent studies, researchers have called for closer attention to be paid to empathy in the education of social workers and in the practice of social work (Gair, 2013;Gausel, 2011;Gerdes & Segal, 2011;Grant, 2014;Hen & Goroshit, 2011;Napoli & Bonifas, 2011). There is a good reason to claim that empathy is an advantage in the anti-oppressive practice of social work, which is intended to help people in various situations of distress, dysfunction or deadlock.…”

‘Making It Real’: Evaluating the Impact of Service User and Carer Involvement in Social Work Education

“…However, this needed to take account of the individual student factors, such as their previous experience and emotional resilience if they were not to become overwhelmed by the experiences they heard about. Grant (2014) stresses the importance of reflection alongside empathy, arguing that students need to be helped to develop their self-awareness and ability to manage their emotions. Without this, there is a danger that students can be distressed and develop defensive and unhelpful responses to service users' (and their own) emotions.…”

Does reflective supervision have a future in English local authority child and family social work?

“…For example, reducing caseloads would allow social workers more time to think and to process their emotions, mindfulness could promote personal wellbeing (Grant, 2013) and Schwartz rounds facilitate peer learning and emotional containment (Thompson, 2013). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 Once we move away from the idea that one supervisor and one form of supervision needs to meet all these needs, we might be able to have a different kind of discussion.…”