Chaplaincy Case Study with Community Partners South Florida
We are currently exploring the potential benefits of providing spiritual care alongside community-based social services in partnership with Community Partners of South Florida (CPSFL)
CPSFL is the largest community-based behavioral health service provider in Palm Beach County, FL, and among its many programs, operates a transitional housing facility located in West Palm Beach’s historic northwest neighborhood, which provides wraparound services.
Our project has placed chaplain interns in this setting who are participating as full members of the clinical team providing care to employees and clients. These students are studying in and supported by the Community Transformation and Chaplaincy program at PBA. This project is developing a qualitative case study, in partnership with faculty at Baylor University*, focused on the following research question: To what extent could a chaplain or spiritual care provider be an integral part of a clinical care model for helping social service providers and service recipients?
Community-based social service organizations are often the first responders to public health crises. Most clinically trained mental health practitioners, however, receive little training in spirituality and religion and express some discomfort in addressing these issues with their clients, and their commitment to scientific, empirically-based approaches may prevent them from considering religion and spirituality in their treatment plans. Those receiving services, on the other hand, demonstrate a desire to explore spirituality in conjunction with their care. This creates a significant gap in the care provided by community-based mental health counselors and clinical social workers.
Considering this gap in service and the potential for improved outcomes, chaplains and spiritual care providers are particularly primed to step into these spaces. While chaplaincy is inherently institutional, the types of human service organizations that have attended to spiritual care needs are primarily limited to healthcare and crisis-response settings (hospital, hospice, police, fire, disaster relief, etc.). Community-based chaplaincy in non-profit settings, however, has only been noted in sparse and disconnected ways, and robust studies demonstrating the need and efficacy of an interdisciplinary approach to holistic care are limited outside traditional healthcare settings. Research in healthcare settings, though, shows a positive relationship between social workers and chaplains, yet few have intentionally pushed this into clinical social settings like community-based non-profit organizations. Chaplaincy is a growing and expanding field and continues to garner more attention in the academy and pastoral training for community transformation.
In demonstrating the need for chaplains in community-based social service settings this project intends to serve as a pilot to justify a larger CCCU grant to develop a more extensive project focused on studies at various community-based social service settings in the tri-county region of Southeast Florida (Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties).
*This project brings together an interdisciplinary team in theology, chaplaincy and social work from Palm Beach Atlantic University’s School of Ministry and the Community Transformation Center and Baylor University’s Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, the George W. Truett Theological Seminary and the Center for Church and Community Impact.
