Holistic Social Work Assessment: Religious, Spiritual, and Cultural Dimensions

Description

Page: 525-533

Dipela Mmaphuti Percy (Department of Social Work, University of South Africa, South Africa)

This paper offers a holistic approach to integrating cultural relevance, spirituality, and religious dimensions into social work assessment. Traditional assessment approaches may be ineffective with culturally, religiously, and spiritually inclined clients. Holistic assessment in social work is crucial because it provides a comprehensive understanding of a client’s needs, strengths, and challenges by considering all aspects of their life. This includes their physical and mental health, cultural background, and spiritual beliefs. This paper presented social workers with alternative assessment approaches and instruments that may be employed when working with culturally, religiously, and spiritually inclined clients. The author contends that holistic assessment enables social workers to identify and operationalize dimensions of clients’ experiences that may be critical to adequate service provision but would otherwise be overlooked. The paper also explored some of the spiritual and cultural assessment tools, such as the historian and ecomaps assessment tools. In summary, holistic assessment in social work, which includes cultural and spiritual dimensions, is essential for providing practical, respectful, and client-centered care. It ensures that social workers can address clients’ diverse and complex needs sensitively and effectively. A systematic literature review was conducted to establish the dimensions of holistic assessment in social work.