SOUL COLLAGE WITH SOCIAL WORKERS: A VISUAL ESSAY ON SELF-CARE & COLLECTIVE CARE

Social workers are at risk for compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious traumatization, and professional burnout (Newell & MacNeil, 2010; Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2011). Although self-care is widely regarded as essential for practitioner wellbeing, its implementation is often challenging due to overwhelming needs and limited resources (Neenan & Whelan, 2025). Collective care, an orientation that emphasizes concern for others wellbeing and promotes collaborative responsibility for both individual and societal health, is essential in organizational culture to meet the same goals (Mehreen and Gray, 2018). In order to support both the self-care and collective care of social work students and professionals, an in-person continuing education workshop featuring the Soul Collage process was completed and facilitated by a trained Soul Collage facilitator, the author. Soul Collage was developed by Seena Frost (2010) as an intuitive process to foster inner knowing. Inspired by Oliveira (2025), a visual essay of five created Soul Collage cards is presented. Engaging in the Soul Collage process in community allows social workers to engage in both self-care and collective care.