Content Level: Basic
Primary Audience: Social workers; social work students; faith leaders; clergy; social service workers

Description

This presentation will illustrate a wide variety of ways social workers integrate their faith and social work practice, and how these different approaches to integration contribute to Christian social workers understanding of both their social work and their faith.

In addition, this session will explore a range of ethical issues related to integration including the importance of social workers:

a) understanding their own religious beliefs and values (and how they influence their work) in order to be able to work competently and ethically with persons who have identified religion or spirituality as important in their lives

b) understanding how to assess and address clients spiritual and religious issues and concerns while maintaining a sensitivity to the issues of unequal power and vulnerability that are an inevitable part of client relationships

c) understanding the context of particular work environments (for example, working in a public agency versus working for a congregation or faith-based organization) as it relates to addressing clients spiritual and religious issues, sharing one s own faith, etc.

Learning Objectives

Participants in the presentation on "Ethical Integration of Christian Faith and Social Work Practice: Pursuing Faithfulness and Professional Integrity" will be able to:

1. Articulate at least six or more approaches or models for integrating Christian faith and social work practice that vary along dimensions such as intention to integrate faith and whether one s integration efforts can be described as more implicit or explicit in nature.

2. Defend the ethical responsibility to be prepared to assess and address spiritual and religious issues for clients for whom religion and spirituality are identified as important in their lives, as well as the ethical responsibility to be vigilant to safeguard the vulnerability of clients by not unduly imposing their own religious beliefs and values on those clients.

3. Describe how the type of work setting plays a critical role in helping determine the most appropriate approaches to integrating faith and practice in that setting.