Holistic practice without spirituality? Truth and Artifice in a Child Health setting

Abstract

The International Federation of Social Workers states that “the holistic focus of Social Work is universal.” How holistic is a health assessment that avoids the very core of the client’s family? By that, I mean the spiritual strengths employed by that family, the capacity to get up every morning and face the day, no matter how challenging. Spirituality, where it is defined as a strength to be drawn on and a means of connecting to the self and others in a meaningful and sometimes transcendent way is often neglected or avoided. This is particularly so in government organisations, where, in the 1980’s, spirituality became a dirty word.
Sometimes I watch myself and my colleagues during multidisciplinary child assessments and wonder how the clients and their families tolerate the invasion they experience every time “a professional” does an assessment. At the very least we are meant to do no harm. At the very least, in a Child Health multi-disciplinary setting, we should provide an interaction that is holistic, beneficial, dialogical, and respectful.
Whose truth am I living when I do a family assessment; mine, the organisation’s or the family’s? What artifice do I employ when I convince myself and my client that this is for their good? This paper will discuss the need for investigating spiritual capital in a family health context providing a case study of a government child health assessment service.