SDR404 Self-Care and Developing Resilience Assignment

Task Summary

Using the personal reflective journal you have been asked to write since Week 1, critically reflect on your strengths and vulnerabilities. Compile a 300-word introductory reflection on a personal self care strategy. This strategy should seek to address your own self-care needs as a professional, in order to help prevent, or to help move you beyond, burnout in your working context. You will then apply your self-care strategy developed in Assessment 1 Part A to later complete a reflexive evaluation in Assessment 1 Part B.

Context

This course has so far confirmed key concepts found in the practice of the helping professions: stress, empathy, resilience and self-care. This task requires you to identify your personal strengths and vulnerabilities, and be given a grounding in the challenges of professional burnout and compassion fatigue. You will also have been provided with tools and strategies to build awareness of your personal self-care needs.

This assessment is designed to draw your attention to a deeper awareness of the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in who you are, and the self-care needs this implies in a professional context. The aim is to develop effective strategies to help you remain healthy in mind, body and spirit as you work in your chosen profession.

Task Instructions

During the learning modules of this subject, you will create a personal journal in which you regularly enter written reflections that help you to process your experience of this subject and relate your new knowledge to your wider life. This journal will be for your eyes only, but will form the basis of material with which you will be able to complete Assessment 1, Parts A & B.

Step 1: Examine reflective journal entries

Critically examine your weekly journal reflections on personal strengths and vulnerabilities, as they relate to your professional context.

See the document titled Helpful Tools for Reflection, found in Assessment 1 information area to guide the reflective process.

Step 2: Critical Reflection Write up

Formulate a 300-word self-care strategy proposal that addresses your personal needs as a helping professional. The aim for your self-care strategy is to build your resilience, and overcoming or avoiding burnout.

Perhaps you have already identified contexts in which you feel challenged or lacking in sufficient emotional resources. Alternatively, maybe you have reflected upon past

experiences that may be useful to draw upon in the future. Draw upon current theories and models found in literature and presented in your weekly module learning to inform your self-care strategy proposal.

You will apply your self-care strategy over the following weeks and write about this experience in your weekly journals. For Assessment 1 Part b, you will conclude with a reflexive evaluation of your self-care strategy.

Tips on Reflective Writing:

Reflective cycle stages:

1) Describe a significant trigger and how it may have felt

2) Evaluate and interpret your thoughts, feelings or behaviour

3) Analyse and make conclusions

4) Plan for the future

Reflective Writing - First Person:

You will be writing in the first person and using reference citations in areas of your writing too for this critical reflective piece.

When describing your reflections you can write in the first person, because this is about YOU, your reflections and your interpretations. (e.g. I considered this advice to be.. because it had a big impact on my..and it helped me to understand my..). Try to be as specific as possible, use brief examples to illustrate your points and try to select examples that enable you to demonstrate learning against the attributes in the rubric.

The next step is to merge your understanding of what the literature reveals that add to your personal reflections. When backing up your personal reflective understanding, with outside sources, all other principles of academic writing apply including strict referencing and acknowledgement of the work of others to avoid plagiarism.