Spirituality and Social Ethics in Social Work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Spirituality and Social Ethics in Social Work

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Integration of refugees; Inclusion – equity; Romas and/or other minorities

Project Summary

The project responds to the growing cultural and religious diversity in EU countries, which brings new challenges to social work and education in social work. Social work faces a challenge to promote the integration of refugees and other incoming aliens from the third countries for whom their spirituality and religiosity are an essential part of their lives. Therefore, the project aims to apply the theme of spiritual assessment to the study and education in social work which, in addition to the biological, psychological and social aspects of the client’s life and life situation, seeks to take into account the spiritual aspect. Spiritual assessment is an established topic, especially in the discourse of social work in the USA; only partial attention is paid to it in Europe. However, the consideration of clients’ spirituality is part of the content of the higher quality of social services in the EU, which is implemented even in such secularized countries as the Czech Republic.
In the spirit of constructivist approach, social worker uses spiritual assessment to try to understand client’s life situation and the role of spirituality in his/her life. Social worker thus can identify client’s values and motivations and can also prevent the risk factors of fundamentalist spirituality and religiosity that worsen client’s life situation. If client wishes, social worker can engage client’s spirituality in a complex approach to addressing client’s life situation. Therefore, the discourse of spirituality and religiosity is closely interconnected to the ethical discourse in social work because social worker works with the value system of client, society, social work profession itself, and his/her own value system, and has to make complex decisions requiring high ethical competence. The European tradition of the secular concept of social work and religious freedom is not disturbed in this way because the social worker does not transport, in fact he/she mustn’t transport, his/her own spirituality and religiosity towards the client, much less question and defame client’s spirituality and religiosity.
The aim of the project is to innovate the curriculum of study programs in social work. These innovations will be achieved through the creation of new education modules at master’s level and the creation of the joint degree doctoral study program that will be introduced and accredited by participating universities. The modules and the program will focus on the issues of spirituality and social ethics in social work. Partial goals are the creation of support materials for educational modules – booklets and internet portal in English, Czech, French, German, Hungarian and Spanish.
The theoretical and methodological basis of the project solution will be the concept of social work as the act theory that works with the so-called transdisciplinary structure of social work. The transdisciplinary concept specifies the basic interdisciplinary nature of social work. The discourse on this topic is developed especially in German-speaking countries. The structure of thinking in social work is based on so-called transdisciplinary relations between disciplines at different levels of abstraction and their interdisciplinary relations at the same level of abstraction. Vertically (transdisciplinary view), social work as the act theory interconnects the level of meta-theories (epistemology, ontology, theory of science, etc.), the level of theories adopted into the discourse of social work from other fields (psychology, sociology, law, etc.), and the practical level of techniques and coduct in practice.
Horizontally, it interconnects the theories of different disciplines on each these three levels in the spirit of interdisciplinary nature of social work. Within this conception, it is therefore possible to work well with both spirituality and religiosity, as well as with the issues of ethics and values. The transdisciplinary structure of social work as the act theory makes it very easy to interconnect the abstract themes of ethics or spirituality with specific procedures in practice which are justified by the results of sociological or psychological (or other) research. It is also possible to reflect specific practice using methods from fields such as sociology, and to interpret it using ethical argumentation. This approach will be implemented into the curricula of training modules and the doctoral study program in the form of knowledge and competences so that the students could acquire and use it in practical work with clients, or learn to reflect it and develop it within doctoral studies.
The creation of the joint degree doctoral study program will ensure long-term dissemination of anticipated innovations, because the project issues will be further developed within the training of doctoral students and their dissertation work. Thus, there will be new well prepared experts able to train social workers in specific thematic innovations.

Project Website

https://spiritualsocialwork.net/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 168879,47 Eur

Project Coordinator

JIHOCESKA UNIVERZITA V CESKYCH BUDEJOVICICH & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• FUNDACION UNIVERSITARIA SAN ANTONIO
• Clare Youth Service
• ALBERT-LUDWIGS-UNIVERSITAET FREIBURG
• Gál Ferenc University