HSC Wellbeing Model

The HSC Wellbeing Model, a practical framework designed specifically for HSC students, is based on solid evidence. It encompasses four domains (Knowing Yourself, Working with Others, Community Belonging, and Navigating Individual Needs), each offering valuable skills that can be honed to foster wellbeing, emotional intelligence, and resilience. 

Knowing Yourself

One common trait among HSC students is their innate desire to assist and support others. Knowing yourself is a crucial aspect that enables you to align your actions with your values and strengths. This self-awareness empowers you to produce high-quality work, remain in the present moment, and maintain your wellbeing, even in the face of challenges. 

This domain explores three essential skills:

• Values and Purpose: A sense of meaning and direction allows decision-making to align with values and purpose, creating a healthy foundation for an individual.
• Strengths: Knowing and utilizing our strengths helps us engage in life in a more impactful way that can lead to greater fulfillment and feelings of wellbeing.
• Self-exploration: Being able to look inward and understand our own identities, feelings, and constructs. In short, truly knowing ourselves can be important for an individual’s peace of mind and for building the foundation upon which they interact with the world.

Working with Others

We aren’t meant to navigate this world alone; individual wellbeing doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Relationships, both personal and professional, are integral to human beings. The purpose of this domain is to help you understand how you view the world and how this perspective can shape relationships with others.

The three skills covered in this domain are:

• Emotional Intelligence: Recognizing our own emotions is critical to perceiving and recognizing the emotions of others, coping effectively with challenges, and using emotional information effectively and meaningfully.
• Global Consciousness: Acknowledging how one’s worldview shapes one’s perceptions helps one respond effectively and relationally in more varied contexts and with people of various perspectives.
• Social Skills and Networking: Relationships are key to navigating our professional and personal worlds. This topic explores the importance of those relationships and practices to help students build healthy, beneficial relationships.

Community Belonging

Communities have an incredible capacity to drive connection, empowerment, and resources. As students in a graduate professional program, HSC students are being educated and trained to serve the community. Participating in your communities not only makes your communities stronger, potentially improving the wellbeing of others, but it also enhances the wellbeing of the individual through a personal connection to others. 

The two skills covered in this domain are:

• Professional community: Being part of a community reinforces shared focus, often driving connection, purpose, and direction. Service to a professional community should have ripple impacts on the wellbeing of current and future members of the profession.
• Service to your community: Service creates an opportunity for strengths, values, and purpose to come to life through the intersection of skills and connection. Your service to the community should positively impact its wellbeing.

Navigating Individual Needs 

Wellbeing is a continual process towards optimal functioning through a dynamic balance among all aspects of an individual. The integration of these elements is highly individualistic. It can shift and evolve to provide us with the tools to navigate life circumstances and the resulting needs of the individual.

This domain covers the following three key skills:

• Physical Wellbeing: This skill isn’t just about physical movement but also about recognizing how our behavior and habits, like sleep and nutrition, impact our wellbeing.
• Emotional Wellbeing: Practicing self-awareness and self-acceptance helps us cope with and stay engaged in wellbeing, even in moments of high stress.
• Financial Wellbeing: Financial security is a critical component that translates into the ability to make financial choices that allow us to enjoy life. Not all financial outcomes are controlled by an individual. Instead, this skill focuses on knowledge and practices that can help individuals understand financial constructs and create a financial plan for themselves.