Welcome
Want to learn about the profession of social work? This site will share my own progress as a social work practitioner, teacher, and researcher. As a lifelong learner, I seek opportunities to build my expertise as well as that of my graduate social work students with the hope that we can collectively improve the world. Please contact me if you would like to collaborate.
Spiritually Sensitive Social Work
Relationships are essential to our basic need for quality of life. Relationships further support the basic “spiritual” or existential need for life meaning. A therapeutic relationship has the potential to enhance life meaning by being spiritually sensitive. My work focuses on spiritually sensitive social work in hospice, palliative, and long-term care. According to Callahan (2017, 2021), spiritually sensitive social work is defined as an awareness and a process.
Spiritually sensitive social work is an awareness of enhanced life meaning attributed to one’s relationship with the self and that which is outside of the self, i.e., environment and/or Divine.
Spiritually sensitive social work is a process of cultivating relationships that enhance life meaning. Every relationship, including the therapeutic relationship, can be “spiritual.”
The experience of enhanced life meaning through a relationship is defined as relational spirituality. While the therapeutic relationship is expected to be life enhancing, it may not be identified by the client as “spiritual.” Likewise, clients may not be fully aware of the “meaningfulness” of their relationships, but limited awareness does not keep these relationships from being meaningful. These relationships may be meaningful to those with whom clients engage (Callahan, 2017, 2021).
A Virtue-Care Approach to Spiritually Sensitive Social Work, presented at the Society for Spirituality & Social Work conference June 16-19, 2021, provides more information. (full transcript available)
Spirituality, Awareness of Personhood, and Being Relationship Centered
Dr. Graham Taylor interviewed me for Behavioral Health Today about spiritually sensitive social work. The name of this podcast is Human Spirituality and the Awareness of Personhood. In addition to being person centered, I hope you will recognize being relationship centered as a spiritual strength. Meaningful Moments and Missed Opportunities reflects some of these relationships in my practice.
Spirituality & COVID-19
Social Work Today published When We Can’t Say Goodbye where Dr. Holly Nelson-Becker and I discuss loss, grief and dying during the coronavirus pandemic. The central goal of this article is to address concrete ways readers can find peace. In the article, Spirituality and COVID-19 in Hospice and Palliative Care I take a closer look at the spiritual implications of COVID-19 for hospice providers, people at the end of life, their loved ones, and those who are grieving a death. To learn a little more about my work, you can view Faith & Hope Hospice & Palliative Care’s COVID Conversation.
Training Opportunities
National Association of Social Workers
The webinar Do Atheists Have Spiritual Needs at the End of Life? is available for 1 continuing education credit through the National Association of Social Workers. With an increasingly diverse society, it is important for social workers to protect, support, and respect the rights of all clients. This includes clients who are religiously unaffiliated. It is important to assess how each client defines their own “spiritual” needs. People with implicit religious beliefs or those who question their beliefs may have spiritual/religious needs that evoke suffering. The need for meaningful relationships remains even when spiritual/religious beliefs do not. This presentation describes how spiritually sensitive social workers can recognize relationships a client finds meaningful and cultivate these relationships to support clients when they need them the most.
By the end of this presentation, you will be able to:
1. define atheism;
2. define spiritual sensitivity; and
3. define relational spirituality.
Society for Spirituality & Social Work
A Virtue-Care Approach to Spiritually Sensitive Social Work was presented at the Society for Spirituality & Social Work conference June 16-19, 2021.
Sensitivity to the importance of spirituality in social work practice has grown over the past 30 years (Kvarfordt, Sheridan, and Taylor, 2017; Oxhandler & Pargament, 2014). Research suggests that social workers more likely to consider spirituality as an expression of cultural diversity, if not inherent to biopsychosocial development across the lifespan (Barker, 2007; Kvarfordt et al., 2017; Lun & Wai, 2015). However, both social work practitioners and educators express discomfort in addressing spirituality, perhaps, due to limited training (Oxhandler & Giardina, 2017; Oxhandler, Parrish, Torres, & Achenbaum, 2015) and supervision (Birkenmaier, Behrman, & Berg-Weger, 2005). As with any approach in social work practice, professional ethics can provide essential direction (Hodge, 2005, 2006, 2016; Rice & McAuliffe, 2009; Sherr, Singletary, & Rogers, 2009; Sheridan, 2010).
By the end of this presentation, you will be able to:
1. define spiritually sensitive social work;
2. identify ethical guidelines that apply to spiritually sensitive social work; and
3. apply virtue-care ethics to inform spiritually sensitive social work.
EKU’s MSW Program
The mission of the EKU's Master of Social Work (MSW) program is to prepare students to be interprofessional social workers who can mobilize the power of interprofessional teams in a manner that promotes social welfare, respect for human rights, and social, economic, and environmental justice. Students learn how to balance the breadth and depth of social work expertise with the expertise of other professionals for culturally inclusive interprofessional practice. This includes the use of critical thinking and scientific inquiry to support interprofessional teamwork congruent with social work values and ethics in response to shared concerns.
Interprofessional Social Work
Social workers engage with many professionals to address complex social problems. This includes leveraging the power of social work to support quality interventions on interprofessional teams. While generalist social workers are prepared to apply multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks and rely on interprofessional collaboration, specialized practice education enables social workers to operate at the highest level on interprofessional teams. Since 2019, the Eastern Kentucky University Master of Social Work program has been developing a specialization in interprofessional social work. This article presents the rationale and elements of this program and how students demonstrate interprofessional practice behaviors that align with the Council on Social Work Education core competencies. It is through this approach that social workers can mobilize the power of interprofessional teamwork to address the Grand Challenges for Social Work. Read more…
Callahan, A. M. and Higgins, D. (2023). Interprofessional social work practice: A call for a new specialization. Journal of Social Work Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2023.2213276
Foundational Work
Are you interested in how spirituality can shape the dying process? Please consider reading my book Spirituality and Hospice Social Work published by Columbia University Press. This book is the product of many years of clinical and research experience. The article Key Concepts in Spiritual Care for Hospice Social Workers: How an Interdisciplinary Perspective Can Inform Spiritual Competence provides a topical overview. The book further explains the evidence supporting spiritually sensitive hospice social work.
“This will prepare social workers well for their direct work with clients and for their partnership in palliative care and hospice teams.”
Updated Chapter on Spirituality
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Some Chapter Key Points
Confrontation with a serious illness can spur spiritual growth in patients, families, their support network, and the staff who work with them.
Spiritually sensitive social work is culturally responsive in that it honors all religious and non-religious spiritual paths as well as the values of those who consider themselves secular humanists or existentialists.
A relational approach provides a foundation for spiritually sensitive social work as informed by the strengths perspective, ecological-systems theory, and biopsychosocial-spiritual model.
Reese, D., Nelson-Becker, H. & Callahan, A. M. (2022). Spirituality and social work practice in palliative care. In T. Altilio, S. Otis-Green, J. Cagle, & R. Brandon (Eds.), Oxford textbook of palliative social work (2nd ed., pp. 39-51). New York: Oxford University Press.
Additional Work
Caring UK article published a three-part series on relational spirituality in British care homes. The first article is called Why Relationships Matter in Care Homes followed by Relational Care and Practical Issues which is concluded by Relationship-Centred Care as a Response to Changing Conditions.
The North American Association of Christians in Social Work also recorded a webinar I provided called Therapeutic Relationship as a Spiritual Resource. My Social Work Today Web Exclusive on relational spirituality addresses some of that content.
Course evaluation is central to good teaching. The last article I wrote with Dr. Kalea Benner, at the University of Kentucky, evaluates an online spirituality course. We evaluate the conceptual processes associated with the building of spiritual sensitivity and the potential implications for social work practice.