Ethical Integration of Christian Faith and Social Work Practice: Pursuing Faithfulness and Professional Integrity
This training 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 training will explore a range of ethical issues related to integration including the importance of social workers:
a) understanding their own religious beliefs and values 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 for a congregation or faith-based organization) as it relates to addressing clients' spiritual and religious issues, sharing one's own faith, etc.
As a result of this training, participants will be able to:
1. Articulate at least six or more approaches 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 ethical responsibility to safeguard the vulnerability of clients by not unduly imposing their ow 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.
Rick Chamiec-Case, Ph.D., MSW, MAR has been the executive director of the North American Association of Christians in Social Work since 1997. A graduate of Fordham University, the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, Yale Divinity School, and Wheaton College, Dr. Chamiec-Case's research and scholarship are in the areas of spirituality in the workplace, the ethical integration of Christian faith and social work practice, and faith-based social services.