Teaching resilience skills to social work students and others

Abstract

Social work as a profession is a growing area in many Indigenous community groups around the world. Students who choose to study social work have some strong voices and commitments to serve vulnerable families, individuals and community groups that are facing some social, health and political issues. Building resilience resources and skills for social work students who are studying social work course is part of the social work roles. In real life, social issues and health issues challenged many people in different levels which caused emotional challenges, feeling of uncertain and helpless. Therefore, teaching resilience skills to social work students is very important in order for students to be well-prepared and managed complex issues of their clients in the field of social work such as emotional reaction of clients and work pressures. This paper is a literature review of resilience that used Ubuntu concept from African Indigenous perspective in humanity and community. The paper first provided introduction of
Ubuntu philosophy to reader. Second, the paper provided background of the research problem, which is the need of resilience skills in social work teaching. Finally, the paper summarised resilience skills that are suitable to social work practitioners, social work students and social work lecturers in their field of practice to support their clients and themselves while dealing with complex and emotional issues in the fields.

Key Terms: social work, resilience skills, students, emotional challenges, teaching, research, Ubuntu concept, African Indigenous