Preparing for a season of self-care – while caring
Nov 2024
Written by Belinda Lorek
As we near the close of 2024, many of us look forward to a break from work or study, while others prepare for the extended school holidays.
For children and young people in care, this time often brings significant changes: transitioning between schools, year levels or teachers, alongside significant changes in daily routines while on holidays. All of this plays out amid the turbulence and family relationships that come with the season’s festivities.
For those working with or caring for children and young people in out-of-home care, we often see elevated emotions expressed through unsettled behaviours, and/or changes in behaviour and challenges articulating what they’re going through.
In response to children and young people’s rising needs, we often find ourselves doubling our efforts to support them through these struggles. Although this extra effort is crucially important, self-care can quickly fall to the bottom of our priorities, just when we need it most.
When times are tough, self-care can feel like yet another task in our over-full schedule.
Reframing self-care
Throughout this year, the CETC has been reflecting with colleagues and the sector on how we can reframe self-care. Instead of treating self-care as another task on our neverending to-do list, we want to shift the focus towards weaving self-care naturally into our daily lives.
Starting small, incorporating self-care into our routine may begin with mindfully identifying things that we enjoy or find helpful. Sometimes, what’s enjoyable and helpful in the long run may seem counterintuitive to make time for today. Our previous blog Too exhausted and overwhelmed for self care has 5 practical and realistic suggestions to reflect on building our approaches to self-care.
Self-care can often take the form of lifestyle changes that can be tricky to start and maintain, such as improving our exercise or nutrition, taking 5-minute pauses through the day to feel stillness, or connect with a friend who sees and hears you. Sometimes, self-care requires deep self-reflection, working out our personal boundaries, and watching our inner self-talk.
Investing in the space needed to develop self-care
This December, we will be running a virtual workshop, The Self-Care Mind Platter: Strategies to care for yourself beside young people with trauma, to provide a space to reflect on our own self-care approach, identify areas for growth, and consider how we can better incorporate self-care into our routines. We will explore the impacts of caring for young people with trauma, and how we can tune into the warning signs that things are becoming too much.
As we begin to wind down the year and prepare for the holidays, now is the perfect time to pause, reflect, and develop our plans to better look after ourselves and our needs in 2025, alongside looking after our children and young people.
