The Encounter Between Faith and Profession: How Faith-Based Social Workers Make Their Career Decisions and Ethical Considerations.

• Main Authors: Kuei-Heng Yen, 閻貴亨
• Other Authors: 鄭麗珍
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99332259188459882543

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會工作學研究所 === 102 === The emergency of social work take roots in Christian philanthropy for caring the poor. The religious values of Christian belief laid base for the development of social work professional value system. However, in the later period of pursuing professionalization, social work emphasized more on scientific theories and helping techniques, less on Christian belief or philanthropy activities. During 1980s, under the neo-Conservatism ethos, the government brought about the religious churches or groups into social services delivery system, more social workers have been hired in faith-based organizations. Spiritual issues and ethical struggles began common in faith-based organizations when delivering the needy services to the disadvantaged population. How do the Christian social workers choose to work in faith-based organizations? And how do they deal with the conflicts between religious beliefs and professional values during the encounter? To investigate the career planning and belief conflicts, this study use a qualitative research approach to collect data. Six Christian social workers from two faith-based organizations, whose main clientele is adolescents, were indepth interviewed. The result indicates that Christian social workers tend to choose faith-based organization as the first career placements because those organizations maintain similar religious activities as they had in churches. These social workers do encounter conflicts and struggles when their clients’ issues are against their belief system or beyond their problem solving capacity. Implications for career planning and professional development are included.