Spirituality Matters in Social Work by James R. Dudley

Author:James R. Dudley [Dudley, James R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317752653
Google: uGOpCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-03-02T06:01:24+00:00

Discussion Questions and Exercises

Over time, many lively discussions have occurred among social work faculty, students, and practitioners across the country revolving around how to respond when clients bring up prayer. If a client asked you to pray with them, for example, what would you likely say? How can your response be supportive of the client’s needs and at the same time authentic to your views on prayer in the helping process?

Review the table on religious combinations between the worker and client presented earlier in the chapter. Which religions of clients do you think you will find most challenging in your practice? Which ones do you think will be the easiest for you? What are some of the reasons why some combinations are difficult for you? How easily can you transcend your own background to be comfortably present with the spirituality of these clients? What do you think you will need to work on to be able to effectively do this?

The agency that you work for can be a valuable ally or an obstacle for you in discussing pertinent spiritual and/or religious issues with your clients. Explore whether your agency (or field placement agency) has a policy or any other guidelines on the relevance and importance of spirituality in its programs. If so, ask how they define spirituality and whether they differentiate it from religion. Under what circumstances is spirituality allowed or encouraged as a topic of discussion with clients? Also ask if there are any safeguards to prevent a worker from bringing up their own spirituality and imposing it on their clients? If there are safeguards, how are they explained? If none of these issues have been clarified, ask whether it would be appropriate to work on such a policy or at least arrive at a formal position on these issues.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.