“Conscious compassion”: A co-created poetic representation of social workers’ experiences with compassion

Abstract

Arts-based research methods have an important place in social work scholarship. Arts-based research methods, such as poetic inquiry, highlight lived experiences through creativity, emotion, and embodiment. This paper shares findings from a qualitative study that investigated social workers’ experiences with compassion in their professional practice through poetic inquiry. Findings are disseminated in a found poem that was collaboratively co-created by the researcher and study participants. The found poem highlights how compassion is a central and guiding force within social work practice. Compassion and connection remain core dimensions of the social work discipline and social work education, scholarship, and practice may benefit from continued exploration of compassion and related constructs.

‘Youth are not something to check off your to do list’: Poetic inquiry into the symbols youth, parents and professionals use to reimagine supports for youth in foster care

“…Research poems may also have important utility for exploring complex relationships (Langer & Furman, 2004). Poetic inquiry and research poems have been used with social workers and related disciplines (Clark & Jen, 2022), Black high school students and their single mothers (Corley, 2020), researchers within a special education music class (Cousik, 2014), queer and trans youth and older adults (Jen & Paceley, 2020) and an individual's experiences with his father's cancer (Furman, 2004).…”

“…These methods, including poetic inquiry, support the development of knowledge that may be more difficult to generate when using traditional quantitative and qualitative methods (Gunaratnam, 2007; Huss & Sela‐Amit, 2019). As one specific type of art‐based research method, poetic research methods have been utilized to collect and represent data that center participants' voices (Clark & Jen, 2022; Corley, 2020; Jen & Paceley, 2020; Leavy, 2018). Additionally, traditional quantitative and qualitative methods may inadvertently reproduce the stigma and systemic issues they aim to address (Jen & Paceley, 2020).…”