Handle with Care: Self-esteem Influences on Students Undertaking Personal Care Tasks

This paper focuses on social work students' experiences of a placement which entails providing intimate personal care for older people. It is based on data reported in a recent study (Fenton & Walker, 2011) and offers a reinterpretation of those findings. Their study is briefly outlined and the original interpretation, focusing on value-behaviour congruence, is summarised. Students' comments are then revisited, highlighting the potential of self-esteem theory to explain the processes at work. Employing a theoretical framework provided by the two-dimensional model of self-esteem (Mruk, 2006) it is argued that students' concerns about their placement experiences, and their beliefs about its benefits, can be understood in terms of perceptions of self-worth and judgements of self-competence. Links are made between this analysis and the model of value-behaviour congruence employed in the original study. Some implications for practice are considered.