Family CARS Training: Competency in Addressing Religion and Spirituality in Families and Relationships

Principal Investigators: Dr. James N. Sells & Dr. Jennifer Ripley

This training will help you apply diversity and family systems concepts to prepare you for clients with religious problems, conflicts, or needs.
Family CARS →

Background

How will you or your students …

• Address the intersection of religion with other aspects of diversity?

• Respond to family members’ conflicts about religion/spirituality?

• Engage with clients that present with a spiritual need or disappointment?

• Engage clients in relationships in their lives or couple/family therapy when religion is an important factor in their lives?

Settings

Graduate school courses
Internship/Practicum sites
Supervision
Faculty/Professional development
Continuing Education

Populations

Couples
Family
Other: Anyone with a family

Evidence

Results from our research indicate that the intervention increases self-efficacy, frequency of use of RS, and global competency.

Spiritual commitment of the trainee was a moderator where high personal spiritual commitment at baseline benefited more from the training, while those with low spiritual commitment had more change.

Themes from qualitative interviews (n=15) with CQR analysis demonstrated:

• Permission to talk about R/S was helpful

• Lacked formal training

• Lacked language to bring up R/S themes with clients/families

• Invited to share R/S within the group experience, safer than other environments 

• Useful interventions presented for R/S

• Benefits of including R/S in intake assessments

• R/S can be a resource to clients/clinicians goals for treatment

• Unfamiliar family systems concepts, wanted to learn more

• R/S is a multicultural competency

Keywords

Relationships; family; couple; marriage; family systems; assessment of religion and spirituality; research on religion and spirituality in family relationships; cultural comfort; cultural humility