Responsabilités
et dilemmes éthiques que pose la diversité spirituelle
et religieuse en intervention sociale:
Compte rendu de la première conférence canadienne
2002
Conference Summary
Workshop Session
1: 10:15 - 11.45 Room 4418
Creativity and Spirituality in the Workplace: Rekindling the Zeal
Many social
workers begin their careers full of zeal and committed to the values
of the profession. It has been our observation that many workers lose
this zeal early in their working lives. Could it be that social workers
find themselves in negative, destructive or unhealthy work environments
where they close themselves off from a core part of their being? Perhaps
social workers have not been provided the opportunity to nurture the
spiritual component and their creative capacities.
In this workshop the facilitators will share activities and material
used in workshops focussing on creativity and spirituality in the
workplace. In this experiential workshop participants will be invited
to explore the application of this workshop format in their workplace.
Linda Turner,
MSW
PhD Candidate,
Memorial University
Brian Ouellette,
MSW
St. Thomas University
Workshop Session
2: 10:15 - 11.45 Room 4420
Preparing Oneself to Help Others
This workshop
explores the central question facing those who seek to serve others
-- how does one prepare oneself personally to help those in need?
To help participants examine this question and explore their spiritual
development, they will be introduced to an ancient form of prayer
know as lectio divina. This process, divided into four steps (reading,
meditation, prayer and contemplation), helps to integrate mind with
spirit.
Abstract:
This workshop explores the central question facing those who seek
to use their gifts in service to others -- how does one prepare oneself
personally to help those in need? Examination of this question reveals
that those who are called to help must be prepared to discover their
own brokenness. Helping professions such as social work have concentrated
solely on preparing their students academically. In doing so, however,
they have neglected the vital spiritual dimension of a person's being.
In order to help participants examine the central question and explore
their spiritual development, they will be introduced to an ancient
form of prayer known as lectio divina. The beautifully simple process
of lectio divina helps us integrate mind with spirit. It is divided
into four steps or levels: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.
While time contraints will not allow us to proceed through all four
levels, we will read, meditate, and discuss five key passages of scripture
that are relevant to our theme. The passages focus attention on our
gifts, problems or brokenness, the universality of suffering, our
ultimate source of help for our brokenness, and the need to treat
others as we would like to be treated. We will then tie this material
into a discussion on the needs of those we are helping. It is my thesis
that each helper must be prepared to discover his or her own brock.
As Jean Vanier stated, "it took time for me to discover...my
own poverty and my own wounds. Once you have realized that, either
you run away or else you have to come to terms with it, with the help
of brothers and sisters in community and with the help of God...People
may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they
will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are
the poor." We cannot help others with their problems or brokenness
until we are prepared to deal with our own.
Eric Crowther,
MS
Private
Practice,
Haileybury, Ontario
Workshop Session
3: 10:15 - 11.45 Room 8200
Aboriginal Spirituality: a Foundation for Social Work Practice
The aboriginal
spirituality workshop will comprise both content and process, exploring
the theoretical and practical issues of aboriginal spirituality.
This experiential workshop will explore the epistemological and ontological
bases of aboriginal spirituality. Aboriginal spirituality will be
examined within the context of colonization and decolonization, exploring
the paradox of drawing upon ancient spiritual identity and practices
within the modern neocolonial context. Aboriginal spirituality as
a critical aspect of the decolonization agenda will provide a theoretical
framework for the session.
Key concepts of aboriginal spirituality and their relevance to contemporary
social work theory and practice will be explored, including ‘walking
the talk' in spiritual pedagogy, ownership, responsibility, and accountability,
and the power of storytelling
The medicine wheel, as an ideology, philosophy, and tool, will provide
the approach framework for the workshop, encompassing both the theoretical
and practical tools shared with workshop participants. Traditional
protocol will be explained throughout the workshop. Aboriginal spiritual
teachings as a foundation for social work practice will be translated
into concepts relevant for all social work practitioners and educators.
Raven Pelletier
Sinclair,
Ph.D. Student,
University of Calgary
Mariah Skye Sinclair,
BISW Student,
Saskatchewan Indian Federated College
Workshop Session
4: 10:15 - 11.45 Room 8201
Intuition
as a Spiritual Tool for Social Work Practice: An Experiential Workshop
The workshop will provide participants with an experiential journey
into the world of spirit, healing and intuition. A combination of
Traditional indigenous ritual, a sharing circle ceremony and psychodrama
method will allow participants to explore and experiment with the
potential for intuitive practice in all social work settings.
Participants will work collectively together, in a spirit of respect
and co-operation to:
- Work in tangible ways with energy
-Connect with the intuitive self
-Explore the potential for a relationship between spirit, healing
and social work
-Explore and identify ways the profession can bridge a gap between
western and holistic paradigms
Experiment with intuitive practice as a bridge between cultural and
spiritual world-views
Julie West-Hayes
, RSW RMT
Julie has been working in the social work field for 20 years in Australia,
New Zealand and Canada. She is presently working on her Masters Thesis,
researching the idea of a holistic paradigm for social work and healthy
leadership criteria for healing initiatives. She has a private holistic
therapy practice, specializing in work that assists clients to release
the stored memory of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual trauma.
Julie works intuitively with her clients and in other social work
settings. She also works with her partner as a community organizations
and corporate consultant, developing needs assessments, empowerment
evaluation designs, as well as organizing and presenting retreats
and seminars. She also offers mediation, facilitation and team building
work that promotes empowerment, co-operation, collective enterprise,
respect and equality within various settings. Julie trained as a psychodrama
director through the Australian & New Zealand Psychodrama Association
and works intuitively as she applies this method in her seminar work.
Kerrie Moore
Kerrie has facilitated workshops for twenty-five years within the
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community. She is currently an undergraduate
social work student who has a Certificate in Adult Learning and a
Diploma in Recreation Therapy. She is a Metis woman who presently
works in Aboriginal communities as a Traditional indigenous healer.
She has worked extensively with Aboriginal women suffering from mental
illness or who are going through the correctional services system.
Kerrie's workshops incorporate Traditional teachings as well as empowerment
methodologies. Kerrie is also a consultant and works with groups and
individuals helping to heal the wounded spirit.
Workshop Session 5: 10:15 - 11:45 Room 8220
Searching
for the Spiritual in Self: The Use of Reflective Assignments
Teachers preparing
students to work in the fields of human and social services believe
that self-awareness is the stepping stone to "other-awareness"
and awareness of universal human needs. This is particularly true
when dealing with diverse spiritual issues. Students needs to explore
in structured ways their beliefs and values, and how these impact
their professional ideologies, perspectives and methods.and provide
the frame of reference to give meaning and direction to what we do.
In this interactive session, we will focus on classroom techniques
that foster personal and spiritual understanding - connecting past,
to present and future. We will discuss the use of guided auto-biography,
story cards, the wheel of change assignment, the self-other letter
and the personal genogram, music and journals.. We will present individual
and group exercises we have discovered or developed to foster an awareness
of personal and spiritual development across the life-span, and will
encourage the audience to share tools and techniques they have found
useful in developing spiritual awareness skills for work in the human
services.
Patricia Slade,
Director,
Social Work Programme,
Redeemer College,
Laura E. Taylor,
PhD
School of Social Work,
University of Windsor
Nancy Sullivan,
PhD,
School of Social Work, .
Memorial University
Workshop Session
6: 10:15 - 11:45 Room 8280
Mindfulness-based
Pedagogy for Critical Social Work
This experiential
workshop will provide participants with hands-on exercises of mindfulness
meditation to be integrated into their social work teaching, especially
the pedagogy for critical social work. Mindfulness is the heart of
Buddhist meditation practice developed about 2,500 years ago. It is
not an abstract concept or a theory or religion, but rather, a practice
of stopping, paying full attention, and looking deeply into the present
moment non-judgmentally. It is particularly useful in engaging students
holistically - spiritually, emotionally, critically and bodily - in
their learning.
Renita Wong,
PhD
York University
Presentation
Session 1: 1:45 - 3:15, Room 4418
The Black
Church as a Social Welfare Institution: Union United Church and the
Development of Montreal's Black Community, 1907 - 1940
Two distinct
interpretations exist in Black Canadian history regarding the influence
of Black churches. Winks (1971) in his classic work "The Blacks
in Canada: A History" maintains that the church possessed a negative
and harmful influence on Black Canadians. He asserts that the existence
of separate Black churches acted as barriers to the ultimate goal;
Black Canadians should have been striving for integration.
James Walker (1975, 1992) in his book "The Black Loyalists: The
Search for the Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870"
provides a positive interpretation of the role(s) that Black churches
played in the development of Canada's Black communities. Walker contends
that the establishment of separate Black churches was a reaction to
the racist and exclusionary nature of Canadian society. He maintains
that the creation of these churches represented a positive and courageous
accomplishment. According to Walker, the Black church offered Blacks
a positive identity, a sense of self-worth and ultimately a base from
which to launch attacks against racism and discrimination encountered
by the Black community.
This paper will explore the contribution of Union United Church, Montreal's
oldest Black congregation, as a social welfare institution to the
development and emergence of Montreal's Black community during the
period from 1907-1940. The paper will also incorporate a discussion
of the formation of Montreal's Black community, which will provide
the context for the focus of the paper.
David Este, PhD
University of Calgary
Presentation
Session 2: 1:45 - 3:15, Room 4418
R.M. MacIver,
E.J. Urwick, and Charles Eric "Chick" Hendry: Three Directors
of the University of Toronto School of Social Work Walking Along the
Road of Secularism.
Using primary
materials from the University of Toronto Archives and the Archives
of Ontario, this paper analyses the lives of 3 directors of the School
of Social Work at the University of Toronto: R.M. MacIver (director
1918-1920) E.J. Urwick (director 1927-37), and Charles Eric "Chick"
Hendry (director 1950-69). Established in 1914, Toronto is the country's
oldest school of social work, the alma mater of thousands of graduate
professionals, and until the 1980s the country's sole locus of doctoral
education. MacIver, a Scottish-born social scientist, was an agnostic
who appeared to rebel against the Presbyterian piety of his childhood
fishing village in the Outer Hebrides. Urwick, the English-born son
of a Unitarian Minister, was an Oxford-trained philosopher with settlement
house experience in east London, deeply committed to Plato and the
Vedantas, and keenly interested in spirituality. Hendry, with graduate
training in religious education from Columbia University, could have
become an ordained minister, but settled instead for a career in boys'
work, and later in social work education. More in tune with MacIver
than Urwick, Hendry personified a post-World War II commitment to
technology and progress. This analysis sheds evidence of the enduring
place of religion in the lives of each social work educator, but also
the growing presence, and tensions, of an increasingly secular approach
to social work– a pattern that was neither linear, nor static.
Indeed, seen along a historical continuum, the lives of these social
work educators portray an uneven transition to secularism, and highlight
tensions and paradoxes of a religious background in each of their
thinking that reflected, and in some modest ways helped to shape,
this transformation over a 50-year period. The paper makes a distinct
contribution to the Canadian literature. In the nineteenth century,
voluntary philanthropic and religiously motivated charitable personnel
preceded the establishment of a twentieth century secular profession
in Canada (Graham, 1992), the United States (Leiby, 1984) and United
Kingdom (Woodroffe 1962), among other advanced industrialized countries.
Recent Canadian scholarship likewise addresses the transformation
of twentieth century social welfare ideology from religious to secular
(Christie & Gauvreau, 1996). Yet no literature, to date, considers
the social work academy's distinct role in the emergence of a secular
approach to social service delivery in Canada – the subject of
the present paper.
John Graham,
PhD RSW
Faculty of Social Work
University of Calgary
Presentations
Session 3: 1:45-3:15 - Room 4420
The Use of
the Hatcher (1982) and Danesh (1994) Paradigm of Spirituality in Social
Work Practice.
The Hatcher (1982
and Danesh (1994) paradigm of spirituality is introduced as a framework
for addressing the spiritual dimension with social work clients. This
paradigm includes an understanding of human nature incorporating the
spiritual aspects, defines an understanding of spirituality and further
elaborates on a process for developing spiritual growth.
Using the above
paradigm of spirituality, a group intervention was implemented with
a young Mother's support group in a legislated child protection agency.
It was hypothesized that encouraging group members to explore their
spirituality could result in increased psychological health. The group
sessions examined how spirituality is understood, the impediments
to practicing our spirituality, the concept of love, ways to practice
our spirituality and educating our children about spirituality.
The group intervention
was evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The
qualitative analysis indicated that participants were interested and
engaged eagerly in exploring the topic of spirituality. The quantitative
measure however suggested little change in the participants' scores.
The Hatcher
(1982) and Danesh (1994) paradigm offers an unique and stimulating
framework for acknowledging the spiritual dimension of clients that
can easily be applied across different social work settings. This
practicum is part of the beginning exploration of spirituality within
social work practice, promising to be an exciting endeavor with the
potential to discover innovative healing interventions for the people
social work serves.
Cathy Rocke, MSW
Child Protection and Support Services
Government of Manitoba
Department of Family Services and Housing
Presentation
Session 4: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 4420
Are Ancient
Eastern Methods Applicable in the West?
Reflections on Some Hindu Philosophies and Practices
The proposed
presentation originates from our ongoing PhD research among the Hindu
population in Montreal which pursues two general objectives: 1) to
know and understand the Hindu culture as lived within the family;
2) to develop a model of intervention in cases of domestic violence
which may be adapted to all cultures. Although our analysis is still
ongoing, our interviews with key informants have so far revealed that
Hindu ancient spiritual concepts and practices such as the search
for balance in ayurvedic medicine, and the practices of yoga, breathing
and meditation, hold some keys to efficiently helping persons with
violent behaviour to develop more appropriate ways of communicating.
We have also participated in courses given by The Art of Living Foundation,
in which we have experienced the soothing and healing capacities of
yoga, breathing and meditation practices. We have yet to experiment
such practices in violent men therapy groups which we are attempting
to achieve between now and mid-May 2002, on time for the conference.
Our proposed presentation aims at presenting our findings and discussing
Hindu spiritual means of helping violent persons overcoming their
barriers to peaceful living.
Margot Loiselle-Léonard,
MSW
Joint PhD program,
Université de Montréal/McGill
Presentation
Session 5: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 8200
Expanding
Spiritual Diversity in Social Work:
Perspectives on the Greening of Spirituality
There is little
doubt that social work has had a strong religious heritage. It has
been associated with a Christian and Jewish sectarian service ethos
from its early years (Canda & Furman, 1999).
While social work went through a fifty-year hiatus when focus shifted
to secularization and professionalization, over the last decades this
has begun to change. Many social workers are finding religion and
spirituality to be important components of personal growth and professional
practice (Sheridan, Bullis, Adcock, Berlin & Miller, 1992). Unlike
the earlier period, the focus of this new phase has tended to be on
broadening the definition of the religious/spiritual construct, making
it more inclusive and honoring of diverse religious and nonreligious
spiritual traditions (Besthorn, 2000c; Canda, 1998; Russel, 1998;
Bullis, 1996; Ressler, 1998).
Fruitful new areas of emphasis in this resacralization of social work
are efforts to establish linkages between a deeper ecological awareness
and spiritually diverse practice (Besthorn, 2000a, 2000b). Social
work has always had an ecological vernacular. Yet, social work's conventional
models have never clearly envisaged the deeper connection between
person and the natural environment. And, only recently have there
been explicit attempts to couple a deep ecological sensibility with
a spiritual or religious consciousness (Besthorn, 2000a; Besthorn
& Canda, in press).
This presentation will assess the status of new international efforts
to infuse green consciousness into spiritual and religious traditions.
It will also evaluate the greening of spirituality in social work
by focusing on the emerging partnership between spirituality and a
deeper ecological awareness. It will suggest specific parameters of
a new green spirituality and discuss implications on a range of social
work practice domains.
Fred H. Besthorn,
M.Div., MSW, Ph.D.
Washburn University
Topeka, Kansas USA
and
The Global Alliance for a Deep Ecological Social Work
Presentation
Session 6: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 8200
A ‘Deeper',
more ‘Social', Ecological Social Work Practice
While an ecological
model of social work practice has been important to the profession
since the 1970s, advances in ecological theory based on developments
by Arne Naess in "deep" ecology and Murray Bookchin in "social"
ecology inform a significantly different understanding of ecological
theory upon which to base an emerging clinical and community practice.
This new ecology emphasizes communal, non-hierarchical relationships,
and the intrinsic value of individual human and non-human, organic
and non-organic components of the environment. Earlier conceptualizations
of ecology in social work, synonymous with mechanistic systems models,
differ from the more mutualistic and emancipatory use of ecological
principles found in this new ecology. These changes in our understanding
of ecology account better for the critical, feminist, and post modern
developments taking place in the social work profession which themselves
reflect an evolving understanding of the person-in-environment and
the dynamics of power inherent in transactional processes. The complexity,
diversity, and symbiosis which characterise Naess' "ecosophy"
was summarized by Naess in eight succinct statements, all of which
share much in common with Bookchin's conceptualization of social ecology.
These eight principles will be explored for their applicability to
the practice of social work in mandated and non-mandated services
Michael Ungar,
PhD
Maritime School of Social Work
Dalhousie University
Presentation
Session 7: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 8201
From Counter-Transference
to Transcendence – The Spiritual Intrusion
Using the counter-transference
as a site of engagement, this workshop explores the social worker's
being as a person and as a professional within the context of "professional
relationships." The interpersonal relationship between client
and worker is heavily conditioned by professional discourses that
produce mechanistic, reductionistic workplaces and prevent social
workers from engaging with an identity that incorporates spirituality
into their being. We try to problematize the dualistic thinking that
locates spirituality only in the "other" – the client's
life-world. We propose that when engaging with clients spiritually,
counter-transference reactions are a necessary part of a joint exploration
to deeper levels of intimacy, trust and connection both with client
and with self. Unlike traditional notions of counter-transference
that view social worker's reactions in a limited and negative way,
spiritually-connected counter-transference reactions are necessary
to a transcendental realm of experience and reality, thereby effectively
challenging the worker beyond the confines of professionalism and
compelling them to question the meaning of caring, empathy, subjectivity,
connection, and love. In this workshop, we will use case vignettes
to highlight spiritually-connected counter-transference reactions
and how social workers can understand and cope with their reactions
toward a deeper level of practice and professional self.
Thecla Damianakis, MSW
PhD student,
University of Toronto
A. Ka Tat Tsang,
PhD
Faculty of Social Work,
University of Toronto
Presentation
Session 8: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 8201
The Interface
of Spirituality and Practice –
Practice Methods and Relationships
My recently completed
doctoral study developed a set of practice principles for social work
and spirituality. Grounded theory analysis of interview data uncovered
significant convergences amongst research participants' beliefs, values
and practices. These unexpected commonalities invited a further analysis
of the data, which produced the practice principles. The practice
principles can be organized into three broad groupings –conceptualizations
of spirituality and basic values; ideas about the processes of spiritual
development and beliefs about the spiritual essence of human life;
and spiritually influenced practice methods and processes. This paper
focuses discussion on the third grouping of practice principles, which
encompass issues related to practice methods, processes and relationships.
Issues for discussion include the incorporation of spirituality into
practice through shifting language and forming relationships with
clients, and spiritually influenced practices such as making meaning,
and fostering connections and experiences of self-love. Overall, the
practice principles are relevant because they emerged from the participants'
collective practice wisdom, represent a step towards helping to legitimize
spiritual knowledge, can promote discussions about spirituality, guide
practice, and provide a base for the future development of spiritually
influenced frameworks.
Diana Coholic,
PhD
School of Social Work,
Laurentian University
Presentation
Session 9: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 8220
Social Work
Students and Spirituality: An Initial Exploration
With few exceptions
spirituality is non-existent in Canadian social work curricula reflecting
indifference to the reality that spirituality is a foundation of client
and personal wellness and an essential component of comprehensive
social work assessment. This oversight also ignores spirituality's
contribution to personality formation, cognition, life meaning and
purpose, interpersonal relations, and the will to accept or change
life and death concerns.
This study asked
third year Bachelor of Social Work students and a comparison group
of third year honours students attending a Catholic university their
thoughts on spirituality and the role of spirituality in their academic
lives. Participants also completed the JAREL spirituality scale. Social
work students reflected traditional spiritual views, and followings,
and typically stated that spirituality had a greater importance in
their lives, education, career goals, and well-being than did other
third year honour students. Social work students were also found to
be more comfortable in discussing spirituality than were non-social
work students. A statistically significant difference was also found
on the JAREL scale. The mean social work student JAREL score was 106.3
while the mean of the comparison group was 99.0. The result of the
independent t-test analysis was t=2.44, df=49, p<.018 (2 tailed).
Thus, it appeared that the social work students participating in this
study had a greater sense of spiritual well-being than did the non-social
work cohort.
Rick Csiernik, M.S.W., Ph.D., R.S.W.
School of Social Work
King's College
University of Western Ontario
Presentation
Session 10: 1:45 - 3:15 Room 8220
The Preparedness
of Canadian Social Work Students for Practice with Religious/Spiritual
Clients
The presenter's
own experiences with the lack of spiritual/religious content in social
work education led to this survey at one Canadian School of Social
Work. Students were surveyed about their preparedness for practice
with the religious and/or spiritual dimensions of clients. Respondents
were asked to report on their past experiences with such clients and
how well-equipped they felt to work with these dimensions. Students
were also asked about their own spirituality and religiosity. The
results will be interpreted in light of the literature as well as
the presenter's own experiences as a social work educator. In particular,
the challenges faced by Christian students in a public school of social
work will be discussed. Audience participation will be solicited to
enlarge the discussion to include experiences from other Canadian
schools.
Sylvia Straka, MSW,
PhD Candidate
McGill University
Anna Pelosi,
MSW
U.N. High Commission for Refugees (Sri Lanka)
Presentation
Session 11: 3:30 - 5:00 Room 4418
The 'Faith
Factor' in Social Welfare Policy and Legislation: The American 'Charitable
Choice' Debate and its Relevance in the Canadian Context
President Bush's
faith-based human services initiative represents a new paradigm in
government-mandated social service provision that explicitly promotes
a significantly expanded role for religiously-affiliated organizations
through the creation of new policy, legislation, and bureaucratic
infrastructure. So called 'charitable choice' sections of the proposed
legislation are the source of heated debate regarding the appropriate
roles of faith-based agencies and the State in social welfare provision;
the reframing of social and personal problems as moral issues; religious
content in social services for non-religious clients or clients of
other faiths; and the issue of determining what constitutes 'legitimate'
religious agencies for the purposes of licensing and funding. Proponents
of the initiative describe it as "leveling the playing field"
in order to redress perceived historical biases against faith-based
social service providers on the part of government funding bodies.
Critics are concerned with the danger of proselytizing of vulnerable
populations, a devaluation of professionalism and expert knowledge,
and a value base that further stigmatizes people in difficulty by
placing the blame on individual deficit while ignoring structural
forces that create or contribute to social problems and human suffering.
This paper offers a brief history 'Charitable Choice', a presentation
of the major themes in the debate, and a discussion of the relevance
of some of these issues for social welfare in Canada.
Analee Weinberger, MSW
Necessary Illusion, Montreal
Presentation
Session 12: 3:30 - 5:00 Room 4418
C. S. Loch
and M. Richmond's Genesis of the Social Situation
Charles Stewart Loch's scientific and charitable methods and definitions
of charity as "interventionist" and as "caring social
relations" between persons constituted a "socially situated
charity." In turn, Loch's charitable framework influenced Mary
Richmond's generation of the idea of the social situation and its
social treatment within the emerging field of social work.
Loch discussed how reciprocal exchanges of charitable activities occurring
in three-way relationships between Divine Agencies and individuals
as well as betwixt individuals created a blended spiritual and secular
realm. He used such a Paulian framework to define charity as interventions
("interventive charity") and as a set of helpful relationships
("organized charity") between God, The Holy Spirit and human
participants. Loch indicates that charity was to be given in a methodical
and knowledgeable manner accomplishing specific purposes. These charitable
interventions were to be done in accordance with certain principles
of charity as he conceptualized that charity itself occurred in accordance
with certain laws of charity In the Charity Organization Societies,
six principles were followed in the giving of charity: Registration,
coordination, cooperation, investigation, and friendly visiting and
adequate relief. Loch states that charitable interventions performed
by friendly visitors contained caring and helpful activities, kindness
and services, engendering friendly feelings and attitudes in a charitable
recipient. As a result, recipients developed "complex relations"
and a social life. They also developed personalities exhibiting certain
moral virtues and loving ways in their dealings with other persons.
Richmond stated that C. S. Loch's charitable helping occurred within
three-way reciprocal relationships between helping persons (first
friendly visitors and then social workers) intervening with troubled
individuals and/or with their social relations constituting her own
initial understanding of a social situation. Later, Richmond developed
Loch's "situated charity" and "charitable method"
into the entirely secular concept of the social situation; described
its various social situational components and how they related to
one another in social processes; and, identified rudimentary individual/family
and helping social situations for social diagnosis and social treatment
as a general method of helping within the field of social work. Overall,
C. S. Loch's transmission of ancient and medieval ideas regarding
religiously based and purposeful caring activities within charity,
as practiced by Divine and human participants, established the basis
for Richmond's development of the social situation and later social
work theorists reworking of her concepts of the social situation and
social treatment into distinctive social work methods.
These findings will be discussed in terms of their implications for
social workers interventive practices within social treatment processes
fostering mutual adaptations and social relations between Divine and
secular persons as well as recipients development of functional behaviours
within integrated and harmonious social situations.
Joel Majonis, PhD
Renison College
Workshop: Session
13: 3:30 - 5:00 Room 4420
Spirituality
and Social Justice: Shaking the Foundations
The recent re-engagement
with spirituality has expanded our collective professional consciousness
to a significant dimension of humanity and human experience. Professional
discourses on spirituality, however, have to be reconciled with the
profession's epistemological and value commitments. Metaphysically,
spirituality has to resist becoming the waste-basket for a framework
that only deals with the social, psychological, and biological dimensions
of being human. There is also the risk of turning the spiritual as
a catch all for anything that is positively valued by the practitioner,
notwithstanding the possible differences in the client's experience.
This workshop explores the epistemological and ontological foundations
of spirituality vis a vis the knowledge and value base of social work.
It covers (1) how to make sense of spiritual experience with regard
to current theories of knowledge; (2) interrogating realities beyond
the common sense world both in terms of materiality and language;
and (3) the idea of community that takes spirituality beyond individual
well-being to engage with the notion of social justice. Presentation
and discussion will be illustrated and supported by actual practice
examples from different levels of social work practice, ranging from
the clinical to the structural.
A. Ka Tat Tsang, PhD
University of Toronto
Thecla Damianakis,
MSW
Doctoral Programme.
University of Toronto
Presentation
14: 3:30 - 5:00, Room 8200
The Role of
Spirituality/religiosity in the Creation of Personal Growth In Bereaved
HIV/AIDS Informal Caregivers
OBJECTIVE: To
explore the experience of bereaved HIV/AIDS informal caregivers, and
the role of spirituality/religiosity in the creation of personal growth.
METHOD: The
study consisted of fifteen qualitative interviews in
Ontario, British Columbia and Québec in English and in French.
Face-to-face interviews explored the experience of HIV/AIDS caregivers
and the factors that participants considered to have contributed to
or detracted from their coping. The theoretical perspective of post-traumatic
growth and the factors that play a role in its development provided
the framework for the generation of questions. The data set is part
of a larger project and participants were chosen according to their
growth scores on the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory and the Stress-Related
Growth Scale.
RESULTS: The
caregivers self-identified as spiritual or religious or they sought
meaning in life in a way that was considered to be spiritual. Spirituality
was widely considered a factor in their
coping. All but one participant had positive experiences to recount
resulting from the loss and trauma involved in losing a partner. Many
caregivers differentiated between religion and spirituality.
CONCLUSIONS:
Growth experiences in traumatic situations are firmly anchored in
spirituality and in some cases, in religion. Spirituality is a central
component of social work practice of in the context of HIV/AIDS.
Susan Cadell,
PhD
School of Social Work and Family Studies
University of British Columbia
Dennis J. Haubrich
Ryerson University
Presentation
15: 3:30 - 5:00, Room 8200
The Role of
Spirituality in the Lives of Families Living with HIV
This paper is
based on a national study of HIV positive women and their families.
In -depth interviews were conducted with 70 mothers and 27 fathers.
The mothers and some fathers had HIV and perinatal exposure of one
or more children had occurred. The purpose was to understand the psychosocial
dimensions of HIV on the parents, children and family as a whole.
We found that spirituality and the meaning of life were critical factors
for parents living with HIV. Drawing on the voices of these parents
we identify how they care for their families, prepare their children
for the future, how they cope with uncertainty, illness and death.
In our presentation we discuss how spirituality plays a part in ways
of coping and how social workers can modify traditional approaches
to address spirituality issues in practice.
Lilian M. Wells
MSW, DASW
Professor emerita & Acting Associate Dean
Faculty of Social Work
University of Toronto
Robyn Salter
Goldie MSW, RSW
Social Worker
Hospital for Sick Children
Toronto, ON
Gloria Aykroyd
MSW, RSW
Programme Coordinator
St. Joseph's Health Centre
London, ON
Presentation
16: 3:30 - 5:00, Room 8201
Ecology and
Spirituality in Social Work: New Roots for Social Transformation
The ecological
crisis, which is forcing many of us to ask about the kind of future
which awaits our children, has drawn substantial scholarly and public
attention to the environmental crisis but only limited concern from
the social work community. This presentation will briefly discuss
the environmental crisis as the entry point to critique social work's
embeddedness in modernity and argues for a new foundation of beliefs
and values which sees people and nature as interdependent and all
things as connected. Such a holistic perspective is fundamentally
spiritual as it leads us to seriously examine what we hold to be of
ultimate value. This presentation will review a new foundation of
beliefs and values, a ‘new story' rooted in ecology and spirituality,
which can provide direction and greater hope for the future. Such
a new foundation is transformative as it leads social work toward
a role in creating sustainable and socially just communities.
John Coates,
PhD
St. Thomas University
Presentation
17: 3:30 - 5:00, Room 8201
The Spiritual
Dimensions of Person & Environment:
Perspectives from Social Work and Traditional Knowledge
Western social
work claims a dual focus on person and environment. In our own theory
base, however, we may have emphasized the personal and neglected the
environmental component of the duality. Over time, the "environment"
of the equation has often been reduced to only the "social environment"
as social workers assess client functioning primarily in the context
of networks of human relationships. We have lost touch with the physical
environment - with a sense of place and the energies or forces associated
with particular locations. Traditional knowledge does not separate
person and place the way Western thought has done. When person and
place are understood as expressions of the same creation, then there
is a profound spiritual connection that is missing in Western social
work.
This paper compares
the relationship of person and place in Western social work theory
and traditional knowledge, with consideration of sacred sites, and
locations associated with positive or negative energies. Central to
the discussion is an acknowledgment of the limitations of the English
language for expressing and exploring these spiritual relationships.
Michael Kim Zapf,
PhD, RSW
University of Calgary
Presentation
18: 3:30 - 5:00, Room 8220
Circles of
Resistance: Spirituality in Social Work Practice, Education and Transformative
Change
My subject location
is that of an Aboriginal woman who teaches in a School of Social Work
and attends a PhD program in Sociology and Equity Studies. In incorporating
spirituality into my work, I have had many uplifting experiences as
a social work practitioner and hopeful ones as a recent educator and
student.
Spirituality comes from within and outside the self. It is meant to
assist us as individuals, families and communities. It is also about
resistance and it connects us to the work of social change.
This paper suggests that since postmodern thought is conducive to
other ways of knowing, it may be a more appropriate lens through which
to look at spirituality in social work practice, especially as defined
by Indigenous knowledges.
The topic of spirituality is an important dialogue which educators
must have with their students. In my four years of teaching, I have
brought spirituality into the classroom not only by speaking about
it, but by doing it. What I have learned so far, is that if I open
those doors by taking the lead, it creates a safe place where students
can share their spirituality. Recent B.S.W. graduate, Greta Lewis,
who was a student in my advanced practice class will address this
component from a student perspective.
As important as spirituality is to each individual's well being and
strength, each of us has a responsibility to use it in creating a
better world. It is the role of the social worker to resist oppression
and become involved in political activism. The structural social work
model guides us in this role, but it lacks any spiritual dimension.
What social workers need is direction based on action-oriented spirituality.
Cyndy Baskin, MSW
Ryerson University
Greta Lewis,
BSW
Presentation
19: 3:30 - 5:00, Room 8220
Teaching About
Spirituality In Anti-Oppression Education:
Using a Light Show as a Visual Aid.
In this interactive
presentation, we will introduce the pedagogy of using a light show,
when examining concepts of spirituality in relation to structural
oppression. This light show was developed by Liberation Practice International
(L.P.I.) consultants to meet the requests of students, who wanted
to discuss spirituality when exploring the practice of "working
across differences". The visual aid is presented in conjunction
with the L.P.I. model of self, which inquires into the spiritual,
personal and systemic dimensions of person-hood. Considering a distinction
between the ‘systemic' and ‘spiritual' self, the model highlights
various constructions, as rooted within systemic power relations.
The L.P.I. light show allows the social work student to quickly integrate
concepts of spirituality and structural oppression, that are commonly
discussed in abstract terms. Having such a concrete hands-on- model
allows the student to develop their own paradigm of practice, when
working with clients across all types of differences.
This 30 min.
presentation is geared towards educators, practitioner and students
involved with facilitating self-reflection/reflexivity within themselves
or others. Space will be provided for participants to share insight
and practice wisdom.
Dianne Prevatt-Hyles,
MSW, Adv. Dip SW, RSW
Jana Vinsky.
MSW
Consultants for
Liberation Practice International. Liberation Practice International
is an international organization located in Trinidad, England and
Canada. L.P.I. provides equity and empowerment education for individuals,
organizations and communities.
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