Feeling Connected: Examining the Importance of Human Connection on the Personal Outlook of Social Service Providers Working with the Homeless During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract This research study explores the lived experiences of social workers and social service providers (collectively referred to as ‘providers’) working with the homeless and homeless-adjacent populations in the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine how the pandemic changed the work providers do, and how providers coped with and adapted to these changes. This research utilizes traditional qualitative interviews with a total of twenty providers located in the North-Western United States (NW-US). Key findings from this research indicate providers\u27 outcomes were influenced by the extent of their social connections to community, clients, and coworkers throughout the pandemic. This study confirms earlier research on the importance of social capital in minimizing negative mental health outcomes for providers working through situations that reflect large-scale social crises. This research has potential policy implications for provider networks in the event of similar crises in the future

Lived Religion, Conversion and Recovery: Negotiating of Self, the Social, and the Sacred

The central theme of the book is the nexus between the self, the social, and the sacred in conversion and recovery. The contributions explore the complex interactions that occur between the person, the sacred, and various recovery situations, which can include prisons, substance abuse recovery settings and domestic violence shelters. The volume includes contributions from a vast range of authors in various academic fields such as sociology, anthropology, religious studies and psychology. It provides a framework for understanding the everyday, embodied and performative aspects of conversion, recovery, and lived religious subjectivities. The volume addresses the gaps in existing literature on the relationship between the self, the social and the sacred in recovery, from a lived religion perspective. With an interdisciplinary approach to the study of conversion, the collection provides an opportunity for a better understanding of lived religion, guilt, shame, hope, forgiveness, narrative identity reconstruction, religious coping, religious conversion and spiritual transformation. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of lived religion, religious conversion, recovery, homelessness, and substance dependence

Negotiating of Self, the Social, and the Sacred in Recovery: A Lived Religion Perspective

In tackling the main theme of the book, the nexus between the self, the social, and what people deem sacred in recovery from a lived religion perspective, in this introductory chapter we focus on the power of the “ordinary,” “everydayness,” and “embodiment” as key to exploring the intersection of religious conversion, lived particularities of recovery and the expectation and action of everyday reality of religion