"Title:
Introducing The ASERVIC (2025) Spiritual and Religious Best Practices
Presenters:
Awa Jangha, PhD, LPC-S, ATR-BC; Craig Cashwell, PhD; Christine D. Gonzales-Wong, PhD, LPC; LeAnn N. Wills, PhD, LSC, NCC; and Anita Neuer Colburn, PhD
Description:
When seeking to provide holistic care, how do we understand and address the impact of religion and/or spirituality on client’s lives? This presentation describes the 2025 Spiritual/ Religious (S/R) Best Practices approved by ASERVIC (Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling), a division of ACA. The ASERVIC board created a S/R Competencies task force to review and update the 2009 competencies. The task force was charged with engaging in revisions that acknowledged cultural humility (David et al., 2018) and diversity, and included resources published during the 16 years since the 2009 version of the competencies. Structured under the Ways Paradigm (Cheston, 2000), the S/R Best Practices were organized into a three-pronged framework of: ways of being, ways of understanding, and ways of intervening. Research has shown that counselors and counselors-in-training have been hesitant to address spirituality and/or religion with clients due to lack of training (Adams, 2015; Gladding & Crockett, 2018; Henriksen et al., 2015). This was evident in a survey given by the taskforce to both members and non-members of ASERVIC (consisting of mental health professionals, counselor educators, students, supervisors, and spiritual leaders). Steps for how to implement the best practices (to learn about and grow in them) were requested along with requests for clarity across the competencies. The task force sought to address ethical use of spiritual/ religious matters in the work of counseling and in the counselor’s self-awareness of their own values in this 2025 revision of the S/R Best Practices. This presentation will review the revision process, the S/R Best Practices, and additional resources.
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"Learning Objectives:
- Learners will identify the spiritual/ religious best practices across The Ways Paradigm (ways of being, ways of understanding, and ways of intervening) and understand how they were developed.
Learners will apply reflection questions that support self-awareness and learning about the spiritual/ religious best practices.
- Learners will identify resources to grow in the spiritual/ religious best practices.
CE Credit: 1 NBCC Hours; 0 CRCC Hours; 1 WA Hours; 0 APT Hours; 0 NAADAC Hours; 1 NY Hours; 0 Ethics Hours
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