This singular reference explores religion and spirituality as a vital, though often misconstrued, lens for building better understanding of and empathy with clients. A diverse palette of faiths and traditions is compared and contrasted (occasionally with secularism), focusing on areas of belief that may inspire, comfort, or trouble clients, including health and illness, mental illness, healing, coping, forgiveness, family, inclusion, and death. From assessment and intervention planning to conducting research, these chapters guide professionals in supporting and assisting clients without minimizing or overstating their beliefs. In addition, the book’s progression of ideas takes readers beyond the well-known concept of cultural competence to model a larger and more meaningful cultural safety. Among the topics included in the Handbook: Integrating religion and spirituality into social work practice. Cultural humility, cultural safety, and beyond: new understandings and implications for social work. Healing traditions, religion/spirituality, and health. Diagnosis: religious/spiritual experience or mental illness? Understandings of dying, death, and mourning. (Re)building bridges in and with family and community. Ethical issues in conducting research on religion and spirituality. The Handbook of Religion and Spirituality in Social Work Practice and Research is a richly-textured resource for social workers and mental health professionals engaged in clinical practice and/or research seeking to gain varied perspectives on how the religion and spirituality of their clients/research participants may inform their work.

This international volume provides a comprehensive account of contemporary research, new perspectives and cutting-edge issues surrounding religion and spirituality in social work. The introduction introduces key themes and conceptual issues such as understandings of religion and spirituality as well as definitions of social work, which can vary between countries. The main body of the book is divided up into sections on regional perspectives; religious and spiritual traditions; faith-based service provision; religion and spirituality across the lifespan; and social work practice. The final chapter identifies key challenges and opportunities for developing both social work scholarship and practice in this area. Including a wide range of international perspectives from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this Handbook succeeds in extending the dominant paradigms and comprises a mix of authors including major names, significant contributors and emerging scholars in the field, as well as leading contributors in other fields of social work who have an interest in religion and spirituality. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Spirituality and Social Work is an authoritative and comprehensive reference for academics and researchers as well as for organisations and practitioners committed to exploring why, and how, religion and spirituality should be integral to social work practice.

Weaving together interdisciplinary theory and research, as well as the results from a national survey of practitioners, the authors describe a spiritually oriented model for practice that places clients' challenges and goals within the context of their deepest meanings and highest aspirations. Using richly detailed case examples and thought-provoking activities, this highly accessible text illustrates the professional values and ethical principles that guide spiritually sensitive practice. It presents definitions and conceptual models of spirituality and religion; draws connections between spiritual diversity and cultural, gender, and sexual orientation diversity; and offers insights from Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Indigenous religions, Islam, Judaism, Existentialism, and Transpersonal theory. Eminently practical, it guides professionals in understanding and assessing spiritual development and related mental health issues and outlines techniques that support transformation and resilience, such as meditation, mindfulness, ritual, forgiveness, and engagement of individual and community-based spiritual support systems.

While the field of management has developed as a research discipline over the last century, until the early 1990s there was essentially no acknowledgement that the human spirit plays an important role in the workplace. Over the past twenty years, the tide has begun to turn, as evidenced by the growing number of courses in academia and in corporate training, and an exponential increase in the publications emerging through creative interaction of scholars and practitioners in organizational behaviour, workplace diversity, sustainability, innovation, corporate governance, leadership, and corporate wellness, as well as contributions by psychotherapists, theologians, anthropologists, educators, philosophers, and artists. This Handbook is the most comprehensive collection to date of essays by the preeminent researchers and practitioners in faith and spirituality in the workplace, featuring not only the most current research and case examples, but visions of what will be, or should be, emerging over the horizon. It includes essays by the people who helped to pioneer the field as well as essays by up and coming young scholars. Among the questions and issues addressed: · What does it mean to be a “spiritual” organization? How does this perspective challenge traditional approaches to the firm as a purely rational, profit-maximizing enterprise? · Is faith and spirituality in the workplace a passing fad, or is there a substantial shift occurring in the business paradigm? · How does this field inform emerging management disciplines such as sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility? · In what ways are faith and spirituality in the workplace similar to progressive and innovative human resource practices. Does faith and spirituality in the workplace bring something additional to the conversation, and if so, what? The aim of The Handbook of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace is to provide researchers, faculty, students, and practitioners with a broad overview of the field from a research perspective, while keeping an eye on building a bridge between scholarship and practice.

As Spirituality in Social Work: New Directions shows you, there has been an increase of interest among social workers concerning spiritual matters. In response to this collective interest, Edward Canda and several other members of the Society for Spirituality and Social Work have compiled a thorough and timely compendium of social work research, theory, and practice. Their book will guide you in your efforts to meet the needs of your families and clients while still remaining educated and respectful of the many religous and nonreligious views different people have. In Spirituality in Social Work, you'll get an update on the current state of spirituality, social work scholarship, and education. From there, you'll move on to current appraisals of the many specialized ways social work educators are teaching spirituality in MSW programs, and you'll ultimately come full circle to a fuller understanding of the many ways social work and spirituality complement and inform each other in the classroom as well as in the field of practice. Most importantly, you'll get specific guidance on these topics: how to enhance the intuition of social workers when to apply the Transegoic model to a dying adolescent where to engage in conceptions of spirituality in social work literature what Taoist insights can do to enhance social work practice how social work can prosper in future efforts to link spirituality and social work In many ways, Spirituality in Social Work is a spiritual awakening in its own right--for social workers, for individuals, and for communities at large. The demand for social work practitioners, educators, and community officials to be cross-trained in spirituality and social work is on the rise. So, if you're struggling to find new ways to deal with the ever-increasing and ever-diversifying demand for spiritual training in your particular social work setting, pick up this insightful edition and find new hope and direction in the many different ways that social work and spirituality can work together for you.

For much of the twentieth century, professional social work sought to distance itself from its religious origins with the consequence being that the role of spirituality in the lives of service users tended to be sidelined. Yet it is clear that many people begin to explore their spirituality precisely at times when they are trying to make sense of difficult life circumstances or experiences and may come into contact with social workers. In recent years, there has been an increasing understanding that in order to be relevant to the lives of people they work with, social workers need to go beyond their material needs, but there is little understanding of how spirituality can be sensitively incorporated into practice, especially when either practitioners or service users have no religious affiliation or there is no shared religious background. In this pathbreaking volume Beth Crisp offers social workers ideas of beginning conversations in which spiritual values and beliefs may surface, allowing service users to respond from their own framework and to begin to discuss the specific religious or spiritual practices and beliefs which are important to them. She considers spirituality in the context of lived experience, a perspective that she argues breaks down any mystique and suspicion of explicitly religious language by focusing on language and experiences with which most people can identify. Such a framework allows exploration of issues that emerge at different stages in the lifespan, both by persons who are religious and those who do not identify with any formal religion. Most literature on spirituality within social work refers to the elderly, to those who are sick or have been bereaved, yet, as Crisp points out, spirituality is important for people of all ages and not just at seemingly exceptional moments.

The Handbook of Health Social Work provides a comprehensive and evidence-based overview of contemporary social work practice in health care. Written from a wellness perspective, the chapters cover the spectrum of health social work settings with contributions from a wide range of experts. The resulting resource offers both a foundation for social work practice in health care and a guide for strategy, policy, and program development in proactive and actionable terms. Three sections present the material: The Foundations of Social Work in Health Care provides information that is basic and central to the operations of social workers in health care, including conceptual underpinnings; the development of the profession; the wide array of roles performed by social workers in health care settings; ethical issues and decision - making in a variety of arenas; public health and social work; health policy and social work; and the understanding of community factors in health social work. Health Social Work Practice: A Spectrum of Critical Considerations delves into critical practice issues such as theories of health behavior; assessment; effective communication with both clients and other members of health care teams; intersections between health and mental health; the effects of religion and spirituality on health care; family and health; sexuality in health care; and substance abuse. Health Social Work: Selected Areas of Practice presents a range of examples of social work practice, including settings that involve older adults; nephrology; oncology; chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS; genetics; end of life care; pain management and palliative care; and alternative treatments and traditional healers. The first book of its kind to unite the entire body of health social work knowledge, the Handbook of Health Social Work is a must-read for social work educators, administrators, students, and practitioners.