Spirituality and religiosity in practice: In‐depth interviews of social work practitioners

Abstract.

This study explored the attitudes of social workers towards spiritual and religious issues in practice, using in‐depth interviews of 56 Utah practitioners. Several key themes emerged: (1) spirituality and religiosity are different issues, but both should be considered in working with all client populations; (2) formal training for social workers currently does not provide the knowledge and skills that are required for practice with spiritual and religious issues; (3) social workers need to understand their own beliefs and biases about spirituality and religiosity and tend to their own spiritual growth; and (4) spiritual and religious content can be integrated into existing social work curricula.

Keywords.:

• Values
• transpersonalism
• postmodernism
• practice models
• social work education