"without Compassion We Don't Have a Social Work Field": Exploring Social Workers' Experiences with and Definitions of Compassion

Background/Purpose: Although social work scholarship has well-established the significance of caring constructs such as empathy (Gerdes et al., 2009), evidence establishing the importance of compassion in the context of social work practice is scant. Compassion, stemming from the Latin words com and pati, means to suffer with and is characterized by noticing and connecting with the suffering of others (Gilbert, 2015). Given the proximity social workers have to vast experiences of suffering (Tanner, 2020), compassion may play a central role in providing meaningful care to individuals, communities, and systems. However, little is known about how social workers may utilize compassion in their work. Thus, this study asked, “How do social workers experience compassion?”

Method: 12 social workers residing in two Midwestern states participated in semi-structured interviews. Participants included 9 women and 3 men, who identified their race as Black (n = 2), Mexican-American (n = 1), and White (n = 9). Participants were working in diverse professional settings (e.g., child welfare, community mental health, advocacy, and policy) and across levels of practice (e.g., providing services directly to clients, supervising social workers, and executive level administration). Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were uploaded to Dedoose, where they were analyzed thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Rigor and trustworthiness (Padgett, 2016) were enhanced through reflexive memoing, member checking and peer debriefing. Analysis occurred in a multi-step, inductive fashion. First, coding occurred following multiple read throughs. Codes were applied in a line-by-line fashion. Second, codes were grouped into categories. Finally, themes were identified.

Results: The results from this study included three themes. First, participants explained that compassion is a central component of social work practice. Participants described compassion as foundational to both individual social work practitioners and to the broader discipline. Second, participants identified interconnected and multi-level barriers impeded social workers from incorporating compassion. Third, participants explained compassion is facilitated for social workers by factors that are interconnected and occur across levels of practice. Interestingly, participants named only individual and organizational facilitators of compassion. They did not identify any systemic or cultural supports that aided them in developing and using compassion in their social work practice.

Implications: This study offers a contribution to social work scholarship by purporting that compassion is foundational to the discipline’s core tenets and ethical values. While results suggest that social workers value this construct and find it imperative, findings also describe multi-level barriers limiting social workers’ ability to incorporate compassion in their practice. Further research is needed to understand these barriers and to develop strategies for overcoming them. Further, findings suggest individual level factors (e.g., learning about and intentionally incorporating compassion in social work practice) and organizational factors (e.g., prioritizing and caring for workforce well-being, utilizing compassionate supervision, and employing compassionate policies), facilitate and support social workers’ compassion. More research is needed to holistically understand how to leverage and build upon these factors, thus fostering compassionate social workers, social work organizations, and systems.