Suchergebnisse

A mixed methods national survey of 2,069 National Association of Social Workers members examined ethical concerns regarding religious and nonreligious spiritual issues in clinical practice settings. This qualitative study focuses on responses to open-ended survey questions and relates them to quantitative findings. Practitioners' insights provide a basis to extend ethical guidelines in practice and education. The findings indicate that most respondents deal with spirituality in practice, and many use general ethical principles and situational considerations. However, they likely lack guidelines for systematic ethical decision making about the use of spiritually oriented activities in practice. The authors suggest ways that social work educators and supervisors should provide ethical guidelines and case examples for spiritually oriented activities in both educational and direct practice contexts.

As service populations have changed, social workers in Norway and the United States have attempted to respond to the needs of diverse cultures, which often include issues of religion and spirituality. Members of the Norwegian Union of Social Educators and Social Workers (FO) and the U.S. National Association of Social Workers (NASW) were sampled to explore attitudes and perceptions of social workers regarding the placement of religion and spirituality in practice. In general, U.S. social workers were more accepting of religion and spirituality than their Norwegian colleagues. Factors such as secularism, functional differences of church and state relations, and different historical trajectories in the social work profession's development in both countries may contribute to differences between the U.S. and Norway.