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There is a broad consensus among care professionals about the importance of the attention to non-material needs. In the care of people with disabilities, these issues acquire a special relevance (Swinton, 2002, Clarke & Cardman, 2002, Kaye & Raghavan, 2002). Spirituality helps to face complex situations and has a direct relationship with well-being and resilience. In the health and social professions, this internal dimension must be kept in mind, either from the point of view of giving meaning to life, or in religious terms. Residential homes, where people with intellectual disabilities live, are ideal places to take care of these aspects. A questionnaire was sent to 172 professionals and the data were triangulated with interviews with family members, professionals and people with intellectual disabilities. The results show that people with disabilities who live in residences make decisions about their own lives, especially in the short term. On the other hand, these decisions decrease as it has a more long-term implication. In addition, we perceive residential homes as places where there are spaces of silence related to the interiority of people with intellectual disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses professional approaches to supporting the spirituality of children and adolescents in vulnerable situation, in the daily life of socio-educational centres. A concurrent mixed method design research project is presented with data gathered using a Questionnaire on Inwardness for Professionals working with Teenagers and Children (Cuestionario de Interioridad para Profesionales de Adolescencia e Infancia-CIPAI) created ad hoc for the project. The study was carried out in the XACS network (Social Educational Centres Network) made up of 23 non-profit centres from Barcelona (Spain). Answers were received from 128 professionals, making up 64.6% of the total number of replies, and from 14 centres, representing 61% of the centres. Conclusions: The professionals state that spirituality is worked on cross-cuttingly in the centre's educational programme. Most of the activities for working on an inner life that they consider successful incorporate mediating elements that assist in the expression of more abstract ideas or feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educating interiority is a fundamental aspect of development and is of the utmost importance in childhood and adolescence because it helps to develop the faculties that allow them to experience life to the fullest. In this project, we aimed to analyze the difficulties that social workers perceive when educating interiority and identify the main strategies that they use to face these difficulties. A mixed questionnaire, with quantitative and qualitative data, was designed to this end, and answered by 128 professionals who work with children and teenagers. The results showed that educators have restrictive beliefs regarding difficulties, which do not always correspond to the real difficulties, which limit their attempts to educate the interior dimension. The difficulties found include those related to the characteristics of the group of children and teenagers and others linked to the low level of education on interiority, the absence of a personal inner life, and the lack of methodological tools to approach this matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]