10th Annual Conference on Spirituality and Social Work

The conference registration fee includes breakfast and lunch on June 22-June 24 inclusive. Delegates are responsible for accommodations and dinners. We have, however, reserved blocks of residence rooms in three different residence buildings, information for which can be found on the CSSSW Website under Conference 2023.

Early bird pricing extended to April 21, 2023. After that date, registration will be $355 generally and $125 for students.

The virtual participation fee includes live stream of 3 keynotes and an abridged live program. The rate is $150 early bird and $175 after .

The 2023 CSSSW conference The Spirit in Social Work: Towards Ecospirituality, Holistic and Sustainable Social Work Practice aims to explore social work’s role in the emerging climate and associated mental health crisis. Understanding and practicing ecospirituality is perhaps more crucial today than ever. In sounding a clarion call calling climate change “the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” the World Health Organization (2021) reported “health professionals worldwide are already responding to the harms caused by this unfolding crisis”. But where is social work in these worldwide responses?

The new accreditation 2021 standards, released by the Canadian Association for Social Work Education (CASWE-ACFTS, 2021), list “environmental sustainability and ecological practice” as one of the eleven core learning goals (p.16), while the professional values and ethics include an understanding of spiritual and cultural contexts in relation to working with people and communities. These standards must be implemented by July 1, 2023. This timely conference will offer critical and creative spaces in which to think about how we might begin to incorporate climate health and environmental justice – not currently part of core social work and allied health and mental health curricula, nor the typical scopes of practice– from an intersectional non-anthropocentric lens to foster and support sustained individual and planetary wellbeing.

With a spotlight on our interconnectedness and dependencies, we encourage you to conceptualize what ecospirituality is (and is not), and to consider how it and related holistic practices might be practiced and sustainably implemented in different contexts, across the lifespan. This conference will bring together researchers, practitioners, educators, students, and advocates from various disciplines, in person and online, for an enriching hybrid exchange and dissemination of scholarship, practice ideas and the arts– exploring ways ecospirituality can inform social work in becoming a more germane profession in the face of the many complex issues affecting the world today, threatening the essential ingredients of good health - clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply, and safe shelter.

Visit the CSSSW Website for more information.