Social Work and Spirituality: A Field Study on Social Worker

The aim of this study is to discover and define the personal and professional perspectives of social workers regarding spirituality and spiritual issues by identifying the relation between spirituality and social work. Moreover, social workers’ approach to spirituality in practice, their methods and techniques related to spirituality, their feelings and opinions regarding the involvement of spirituality in the process, and their opinions about social work education programs in terms of spirituality are studied. The study is based on “sequential explanatory design” which is one of the mixed method designs. In the first phase, 218 social workers were surveyed online. In the second phase, interviews were held using semi-structured interview forms with 18 social workers. As a result of this study, it has been identified that social workers are not fully equipped regarding spirituality and social work practice, and their knowledge on spirituality is quite limited; however, they are interested in spirituality and they are willing to know more about this subject. It has been concluded that social workers define their opinions about spirituality-sensitive social work mostly through the ethics and principles of social work, and the majority believes that spirituality concept should be involved in the practices of social work