What is empathy and what is its value to social work?
Learning Objectives
After considering this resource, you should understand the importance of empathy in building trusting relationships and appreciate its significance for achieving positive outcomes for service users.
Empathy is the skill of tuning into other people's thoughts and feelings. In social work, where the relationship between practitioner and service user is a cornerstone of effective practice, empathy is therefore key.
In this video, David Howe speaks about the importance of being able to see and feel things from another person's point of view. He explains how social workers can build this awareness into their practice in order to foster stronger relationships with service users.
He discusses how empathic practice can lead to better outcomes. Showing understanding helps to generate trust. When they feel safe and understood, service users can relax and reflect, sometimes contemplating behaviour and change that they had not thought possible before.
Reflective Questions
- Think of a time when you experienced stress or anxiety in your own life. How important was it to you to feel understood by others? How did you want others to engage with you?
- Consider the possibility of working with someone who has sexually abused a child, behaved violently towards family members, or physically abused an older person. In what ways do you think you may need to be able to empathise with them as a social worker? To what extent could you separate the person they are from what they have done?
- As a social worker, you will need to communicate empathy while respecting professional boundaries. Think of a professional you respect who handles this balance of empathy and professionalism well. What do they do that works well? What do you think you could emulate?