Spiritual support services and institutionalization in Turkey

Recently spiritual support has become a popular approach in social work discipline. The main reason of this situation is that spiritual support find solutions where it is applied and similarly positive feedbacks from clients. This approach is to find out answers to individuals' existential problems about life. According to this approach, being unable to refer "meaning" and "aim" to individual and individual's life is the main reason of modern world's problems. astane reason people feel themselves as being in an "existential vacuum". From this point of view the approach claims that problems only can be solved by finding "meaning". Social work discipline has not ignored this approach and used it in social work practice. This study aims to investigate institutionalization process of spiritual counseling services and thoughts of service providers in the field about spiritual support services in Turkey. In the study criterion sampling which is one of qualitative research methods was used. Interview and survey techics were used in order to collect data. In the theoretical part of the study, relation of social work and spiritual support services were handled. In the application of the study, datas collected through interviews were analyzed using descriptive analysis method. Semi structured interview forms were used with 5 persons in total. As a result of the study, it can be seen that spiritual support services are provided independent from social work profession. Therefore, context of spiritual support service has been limited and only a perception of religious services has generated. Also, service providers in the field have mentioned the need for spiritual support services. Furthermore, the need for an education before providing services to the service providers has been clear.