ABSTRACT
Clients' spirituality typically informs a diverse array of beliefs and values that intersect service provision, from communication styles to gender and marital interactions to medical care. In the process of addressing client spirituality, social workers often encounter people from diverse religious backgrounds. Spiritual competence is the vehicle that allows practitioners to overcome the obstacles presented by dissimilar value systems. Spiritual competence can be understood as a form of cultural competence that deals with spirituality and religion, specifically clients' individually constructed spiritual worldviews. The thumbnail definitions provide a foundation for understanding the three dimensions of spiritual competence. The first dimension of spiritual competence is developing an understanding of one's own value-informed worldview, in tandem with its assumptions, limitations and biases. The second dimension of spiritual competence is to develop an empathic, strengths-based understanding of the client's spiritual worldview. The third dimension of spiritual competence is the ability to design and implement interventions that resonate with clients' spiritual worldview.
