Smith College: School for Social Work

CONTEMPLATIVE CLINICAL PRACTICE:
An Advanced Certificate Program in Spirituality and Social Work Practice

This Advanced Certificate Program in spirituality and clinical social work practice will consider the clinical relationship as a potential locus of the sacred. It will deepen the clinician’s awareness of the sacred dimension of his/her work by exploring his/her own religious histories and spiritual practices, the clients’ spiritual beliefs and practices, and the clinical relationship itself. The program will provide a framework for assessing religious and spiritual development and explore issues of ethics and social justice as they relate to spirituality.

Cultivating awareness is crucial for clinical practice in a complex, global world. The capacity of the clinical social worker to pay attention to the dynamics of the clinical relationship can be enhanced by continuous self reflection and contemplative practice. Contemplative practices can deepen awareness and develop a stronger connection to one’s inner wisdom. Practices originating in religious traditions and those being created in secular contexts can deepen the reflective experience for both the clinician and the client.

Traditions will be explored using didactic and experiential methods. Using case material and sacred texts, participants will examine the strengths, limitations and possibilities of theories and practices for clinical work with clients from different backgrounds and with a range of psychological and spiritual concerns.

Participants in this advanced certificate program will:

Develop knowledge, skills and a language in accessing religious and spiritual development in treatment interventions;
Acquire knowledge and skills in understanding religious and spiritual practices across issues of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and cultural diversity;
Develop a capacity to build a sustainable contemplative practice for self and others.

Application Information
Click here for admission requirements and application information.

Program Structure
The program consists of two extended weekend academic sessions (Thursday evening through mid-Sunday) of intensive coursework at the Smith College School for Social Work. Classes will include a rich variety of relevant theories, active class participation and case-based instruction based on students’ current clinical work. Between the two academic weekends, students will participate in monthly facilitated chat conference call discussions. The conference calls will allow participants the opportunity to discuss issues related to attending to the contemplative dimensions in their lives and the enhancement of a contemplative practice in their clinical work with clients. (Session I will be held Septermber 30-October 3, 2010 and Session II on April 7 - 10, 2011; see listing of topics below.)

Continuing Education Credits
The Certificate Program in Contemplative Clinical Practice carries 31.5 Continuing Education Credits.

The Smith College School for Social Work is accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. Courses offered through the School’s Program of Continuing education are awarded continuing education credits in accordance with Continuing Education Regulation 258, CMR, 31.00 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The State of California has also approved the SSW Continuing Education Program as a CA Continuing Education Provider (Approval No. PCE 3212) If outside these states, please call for accreditation information regarding your state.

Eastern and Western Religious and Spiritual Traditions
Religious and spiritual traditions provide critical insights both personally and professionally for social work practitioners. By exploring the beliefs and values of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism and traditions that include those influenced by African, Asian, Latino/Latina, and Native American worldviews, participants will gain knowledge of and perspective on the importance of religious values, beliefs and practices in their work with clients. Nonsectarian spiritual perspectives based in humanism such as existentialism and transpersonal theory will be explored in the certificate program. It is the goal of the program that gaining familiarity with the basic beliefs and practices of all traditions will increase clinicians’ competencies in practice with those struggling to find meaning, purpose and effective responses to individual and collective suffering.

Trauma and Spirituality
Spirituality is often a well of hope for those suffering the effects of trauma. This session explores religious and spiritual practices as resources for making meaning out of the ashes of traumatic events that occur from individual experiences, historical oppression, community events, natural disasters, and war. The usefulness of both psychodynamic and transpersonal theoretical orientations will be examined. Particular attention will be given to faith development and process-oriented frameworks for understanding the personal meaning attached to symbols, rituals, beliefs and divine figures, and to learning about internal relationships to religious and spiritual resources. While the focus of this session is on a strengths perspective, this does not preclude an examination of those religious or spiritual experiences that have had a negative impact on the individual and group experience of coping with trauma.

Assessment & Diagnosis: Integrating a Spiritual History
This session will assist clients in identifying ways to assess
clients' religious histories, existential concerns, and spiritual beliefs and will suggest some ways of opening these conversations in psychotherapy.
Particular attention will be paid to the therapist's own spiritual
beliefs/religious history as a lens through which they view their client's stories as well as to the issues of transference and countertransference raised in the process of doing a spiritual assessment. This workshop will involve some didactic teaching and experiential work.

Psychological Theories and Their Relationship to Spirituality
This session will explore the ways in which a client's spiritual beliefs and religious history can provide a therapist with important information about a client's inner life. Particular attention will be paid to Object Relations Theory and the development of an individual's internalized object representation of their God. Using the novel Letter to Sister Benedicta as a common case, participants will apply this material to clinical work.

Cross Cultural Issues and the Significance of Difference
Some spiritual paths invite us to relinquish the concerns of "self" and to see the confines of "identity" as a source of suffering. And yet, even as we aspire to dissolve our separations from all beings, there are ways we need to persist in exploring and claiming our distinct roles and experiences within systems of social injustice and privilege. How can we utilize our complex "identities" to inform our engagement in transformational work, both personally and professionally? This session will reflect on the significance of social location as a platform for socially engaged practices and will guide participants in adopting accountability strategies at personal, interpersonal, and community levels.

Compassion, Justice and Suffering
This session will focus on the “bigger picture,” suffering in the context of oppression and social injustice. Students will use the clinical/pastoral encounter as an entry point into a discussion of the social conditions that create suffering on the individual and communal levels. Christian and Jewish notions of lament and repairing the world will inform our discussion.

Hope, Despair, Depression, Hope
This session will use Martha Manning’s, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface as a jumping off point. From this personal account of depression we will examine the phenomena of depression, despair and the dark night. Students will also explore paths to healing, hope, and transcendence.

Spiritual Issues in Death and Dying
The intersection of spiritual and psychodynamic issues at the end of life is addressed in this session. How multicultural and ethnic groups view death, dying, and grieving will be included along with their implications for practice are discussed. This course will expand practitioner’s knowledge and skills in integrating psychological and spiritual ways of making meaning. Special attention will be given to applying knowledge from a variety of religious traditions and spiritual disciplines to a range of end-of-life settings. The course is designed to enrich the practitioner’s own comfort with diverse religious and spiritual practices.

(The Smith College School for Social Work reserves the right to modify content as appropriate.)