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.
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
