ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the virtues of perseverance, hope and resilience, and explores how they relate to and support one another. It explores examples of hope, resilience and perseverance across different social work practice contexts. The chapter considers how hope, perseverance and resilience may be cultivated in the social work profession. Social work often requires practitioners to maintain a positive view about possibilities for change and a commitment to long-term work in which progress may be slow or there may be setbacks. In this chapter we look at three interconnected virtues that contribute to the potential for social workers to be able to ‘keep going’. In counselling and family therapy practice, Flaskas argues that hope is a crucial dimension that enables practitioners to focus their interventions towards good outcomes. She refers to counsellors and therapists as having ‘strong personal reservoirs of hope’.
