“It’s not about imposing what I believe or what I value”: Social workers’ personal reflections on religion and spirituality and their influence on practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT A growing body of work has identified the impact of spirituality and religion in the life of the client and the significance it has for how social workers approach and understand their work. This study, based on qualitative interviews with social work practitioners, contributes to this literature by exploring how social workers’ beliefs impact their motivation to enter the profession, their willingness to explore spirituality and religion with clients, and the role that their own sense of spirituality or religion has in supporting or challenging them in the face of a difficult profession. We found that participants expressed a nuanced understanding of their spiritual or religious identification, offering a critically reflexive stance that demonstrated a fluidity in beliefs that for several also correlated with a willingness to initiate exploration of the significance of spirituality and religion in their clients. Our findings indicate that social workers are motivated to enter a profession that aligns with their values, and that more education and training are needed to better equip social service agencies to understand the significance of spirituality and religion, and to support social workers to engage in exploration of spirituality and religion in their work with clients.