Abstract
The population of students within the graduate Social Work program at California State University, Sacramento, are required to juggle their personal lives, courses, coursework, and the lives of their clients because of field internships. The purpose of this study was to identify self-care practices among two specializations within the program, Behavioral Health and Children & Families, to see which specialization practiced more self-care. The researcher hypothesized that the students within Children & Families practiced more self-care. This study used convenience sampling and snowball sampling of 70 MSW II participants within the graduate Social Work program at California State University, Sacramento, of the 2018 graduating cohort. Quantitative data was collected through surveys distributed to practice classrooms and online through Survey Monkey. Participants were asked to identify demographic information and self-care practices from a list that was provided to them. The researcher also asked whether students felt they practiced self-care enough. An ANOVA test was completed to look at all three specializations and find areas of statistical significance, due to there being a statistical significance- a POST HOC test using the TUKEY HSD was completed to find which specializations had significance within this study. MSW II students within the Children & Families specialization felt they practiced enough self-care, more than students within the Behavioral Health specialization. The researcher hypothesized that students within Children & Families would practice more self-care than the Behavioral Health students. Post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for the Behavioral Health within Children & Families (M = 0.77743, SD = 0.298) was significantly different than the Children & Families within Behavioral Health (M =-.077743, SD = 0.298). This study provides evidence to suggest that many social work graduate students do not feel they practice enough self-care. This study implicates that self-care topics should be included more often within the curriculum of graduate social work students so future students may learn to develop their own self-care regimen and include it within their daily lives- both within the academic program and throughout their careers.