Imagine you are a social worker at a hematology oncology (blood cancers) unit of a pediatric hospital. The children who are inpatients in this unit often face extremely painful treatments and a substantial minority of them die from their cancers. Many fami-lies attending the unit have complained to you that, while they are happy with the standard of medical and nursing interventions, they do not believe that their spiritual needs are being adequately acknowledged at this time of great spiritual need for them. Concerns have been raised by families from a range of religious denominations, although those of non-Christian faiths appear to have experienced least recognition of their spir-itual practices. In particular, families of non-Christian faiths have stated that hospital staff members have usually ignored their requests for recognition of their spiritual practices, such as blessing their child’s room prior to the child’s initial entry to it, or opportunities for prayer time with the child prior to major medical interventions.
How would you, as a social worker, go about promoting greater recognition of reli-gious and spiritual need and diversity in this practice context.
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