Spirituality and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities: staff attitudes and perspectives in relation to spiritual care provision

Aim: Religious/spiritual communities may provide aconduit to making friendship for people withintellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Thisresearch explores the significance of spirituality inrelation to the s ocial networks of individuals in a faith-based and a non-faith based service. Method: Amixedmethods approach was u sed during six months ofvoluntary work within each service. Interviews withindividuals with IDD (or staff members for those wholacked capacity to consent) as well as the SocialNetwork Guide and S piritual Belief Inventory-15Rwerecorroborated with field notes and participantobservation. Results: Average network size significantlydiffered with the faith-based group having a highernetwork size of 78 compared to the non-faith basedgroup (average size=44). Individuals with l argernetworks reported higher SBI-15Rscores.Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance ofsocial, spiritual/religious activities f or expandingindividuals’ social netw orks.