Engaging in Difficult Conversations: Supporting the Spiritual Needs of People with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities

This article joins the existing conversation about the place and importance of spirituality for persons with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD). While the conversation is marginal and predominantly informed by US-based studies, we present findings from a study based in Metro Vancouver, Canada that continues a decade of research by three local community living organizations, which discovered an egregious lack of attention to supporting the inner needs of human life and wellbeing. With an understanding that spirituality is largely omitted from discussions of wellbeing but can be a powerful component of human life, we explored how “spiritual literacy”—described as an ability to engage with religious and nonreligious spiritualities in our study—can further support well-being for adults with IDD. Specifically, we examined staff and management perspectives concerning their role in supporting the spiritual literacy and journeys of persons with IDD. Through a survey across the three organizations; sense-making sessions with frontline staff, managers, CEOs, and board members; and, co-analysis with staff to further analyze the data, we learned that: 1) everyone defines “spirituality” differently which makes an organizational strategy difficult to devise; 2) staff lack training around religion and spirituality and feel ill-equipped to provide literacy or guidance; and, 3) clear guidelines are needed to navigate ethical dilemmas. We discuss each finding in this article and offer practical implications for agencies. While it provides findings from stage one of our project, another article will present findings from conversations with adults with IDD to provide further insight into this discussion.