Informed Consent Agreements: Standards of Care for Digital Social Work Practices

The inclusion of remote digital practices (e-mail, texting, blogging, social media) to deliver social work services raises unique ethical and legal challenges for client and practitioner. Competent care necessitates providing clients with information that would materially affect clients’ decisions whether to assume the risks, benefits, and conditions associated with e-practices. As standards of care for distance service provision have not been firmly established, social workers are duty bound to be well-informed about current laws, duties, and obligations including specific rules governing the practice of social work in the states where they deliver remote services. This article identifies distinct threats to privacy and confidentiality associated with e-practices and offers suggested content for a comprehensive informed consent policy.     

Evolving Ethical Standards in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT

Ethical standards in social work have matured significantly since the formal inauguration of the profession in the late 19th century. This article traces the global evolution of ethical standards in social work, focusing especially on current challenges in the digital age. The author discusses changes over time in social workers’ understanding of ethical issues and development of conceptual frameworks and protocols for managing them. Social workers’ increasing use of digital technology poses novel and unprecedented ethical challenges pertaining to privacy, confidentiality, informed consent, professional boundaries, conflicts of interest, documentation, client abandonment, and professionalism, among others. The article outlines emerging ethical standards designed to help social workers manage ethical challenges in the digital age.     

Confidentiality

Abstract

Confidentiality was the ethical dilemma most frequently encountered by Israeli social workers in a 1998 national survey (Linzer, Conboy and Ain, 2002). A reanalysis of survey responses found the social workers cared about preventing violations of client privacy, promoting client self-determination, and respecting client dignity, especially when challenged by: (1) public institutions' right to know, (2) limitations of protection of client communications and information, including duty to warn, (3) child and family dilemmas, (4) informed consent ambiguities, and (5) computers and technology utilization. Social workers looked to their own counsel, colleagues, and supervisor's advice and their professional code of ethics for guidance.     

Liability and the Internet: Risks and Recommendations for Social Work Practice

SUMMARY

Use of the Internet for counseling and information services has increased dramatically in the last five years. Although the Internet may benefit consumers by helping them secure needed services and resources, social workers and social service agencies who provide counseling over the Internet need to be aware of the legal risks associated with its use. Among the most salient concerns that need to be addressed are client confidentiality and privacy of records, appropriateness of treatment services, and the duty to warn others of harm that a client might pose to them. This paper looks at these legal concerns in light of appropriate Social Work practice and recommends methods to abate the risks that might occur when Internet counseling and service is provided.     

Privacy and confidentiality in social work

Abstract

In the human services confidentiality is a central principle defining the relationship between the worker and the client. In this paper the authors argue that the human services have privileged the notion of confidentiality over the more fundamental right of privacy. They argue there is a persistent confusion between these two concepts and that privacy is an important but neglected ethical concept within human services. The authors discuss the relationship between privacy and confidentiality and identii some of the implications of the privacy concept for practice.     

Reflections on Closeted Helping Professionals

Abstract

Reflections noted in the provocative paper by Roui-lard elsewhere in this volume are reconsidered from a variety of professional and client perspectives. Among these viewpoints is a discussion regarding the boundaries of disclosure of sexual orientation. Public or professional responsibilities concerning disclosure are considered in light of the right to privacy of lesbian and gay helping professionals. The impact of disclosure upon lesbian or gay clients as it relates to the age of the client and of the service being provided is considered. Some political implications of “coming out” versus remaining “closeted” are also discussed.     

“Tell Me So That I Can Help You”: Private Information and Privacy Coordination Issues in the Context of Eldercare

In order to provide competent care to aging parents, adult children, and older parents must renegotiate long-standing privacy boundaries that allow caregivers access to parents’ private information. It is reasonable to surmise that caregivers encounter privacy coordination issues when attempting to care for their aging parent. This study utilizes Communication Privacy Management theory to explore what content is considered private and what privacy coordination issues arise in the context of eldercare. Results from 27 in-depth interviews with adult children caring for an aging parent suggest that information concerning parents’ future care, health and well-being, and (in)capabilities were marked private. The findings also detail three disruptions to privacy coordination, including parental caregivers’ ambivalence toward managing parents’ care-related information. Critical implications of the study are discussed, which include how privacy turbulence may be a functional catalyst for boundary recalibration.     

PRIVACY PROTECTION STRATEGIES ON FACEBOOK

The privacy paradox describes people's willingness to disclose personal information on social network sites despite expressing high levels of concern. In this study, we employ the distinction between institutional and social privacy to examine this phenomenon. We investigate what strategies undergraduate students have developed, and their motivations for using specific strategies. We employed a mixed-methods approach that included 77 surveys and 21 in-depth interviews. The results suggest that, in addition to using the default privacy settings, students have developed a number of strategies to address their privacy needs. These strategies are used primarily to guard against social privacy threats and consist of excluding contact information, using the limited profile option, untagging and removing photographs, and limiting Friendship requests from strangers. Privacy strategies are geared toward managing the Facebook profile, which we argue functions as a front stage. This active profile management allows users to negotiate the need for connecting on Facebook with the desire for increased privacy. Thus, users disclose information, because they have made a conscious effort to protect themselves against potential violations. We conclude that there is a tilt toward social privacy concerns. Little concern was raised about institutional privacy and no strategies were in place to protect against threats from the use of personal data by institutions. This is relevant for policy discussions, because it suggests that the collection, aggregation, and utilization of personal data for targeted advertisement have become an accepted social norm.     

Human Services and the Ethics of Computer Matching

Abstract

Computer matching has been extensively used by government, primarily as a means of cost-savings and fraud detection. Despite concerns about the invasion of privacy, clear ethical standards about computer matching have not been established. However, a study of past matching practices reveals an implied set of principles. Efficiency is valued over privacy. Welfare clients and government employees are viewed as having sacrificed the right to privacy. Some due process protections are viewed as legitimate but have not been well-implemented. The newly-passed Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (PL 100-503) strengthens these due process protections.     

Understanding and explaining online personal information-sharing behaviours of New Zealanders: a new taxonomy

Although research evidence shows that people have strong concerns about their privacy online, this does not necessarily mean that they do not share their personal information in varying online relationships. This paper presents New Zealand-based empirical research findings into people’s actual online information-sharing behaviours rather than their attitudes: the motivations, extent, and conditions under which individuals share their personal information in varying online relationships with commercial providers, with government, and on social networking sites. A grounded theory methodology and an abductive analysis were used to identify patterns in the findings and construct a new taxonomy of online information-sharing behaviours: contrary to existing taxonomies, all participants in this study are very privacy aware and make quite deliberate choices about what personal information they share online, with whom, to what extent, and under what circumstances. Four distinctive classifications of people’s online information-sharing behaviours were derived from this study: privacy pragmatists, privacy victims, privacy optimists, and privacy fatalists.     

Privacy as a Common Good in the Digital World

This article seeks to broaden our understanding of online privacy in three ways: first, by drawing out the differences between the physical world and the digital world as those differences affect privacy; second, by exploring how the concept of the 'commons' might help us to understand social and economic relationships in cyberspace; and third, by analysing two contrasting views of privacy: privacy as a private or individual good and privacy as a common good. In order to analyse similarities and differences in privacy in the physical world and the online world, each is assessed in three ways: the obvious level of privacy available; the possibility of modifying that level of privacy to create or choose more or less privacy for oneself; and the degree to which the, prior or contemporaneous, privacy decisions of others affect the amount of privacy that is available to all. Applying an analysis based on the 'tragedy of the commons', the article concludes that at least part of cyberspace can be conceived as a 'commons' and that personal information flows could be considered a 'common pool resource' within that commons. Based on the likely calculations that individuals and organizations will make about collection and uses of personal information, the article next evaluates what would be the most effective policy approach to ensure that the common pool resource of personal information is not overused and degraded. The article concludes that a policy approach of providing individuals with a private means, either through property rights or some means of redressing their grievances, is unlikely to provide an effective means of protecting the common pool resource of personal information. A policy approach that acknowledges the common good basis of privacy and views personal information as a common pool resource provides an alternative view of the policy problems and offers suggestions in terms of rules and institutions that may be effective in addressing those problems.     

Privacy,technology, and conflict: Emerging issues and action in workplace privacy

IV. Conclusion Growing employee awareness of the degree to which their personal privacy is compromised in the workplace, particularly with regards to information/telecommunicatton-system use and work monitoring, has created an organizational and political climate that may yield significant restrictions on employee monitoring and on how employers maintain and distribute employees’ personal information. While both federal and state governments have generally deferred to the right of the employer-as-owner to set conditions of employment that may include intrusions into employee privacy (Grodin, 1991), a number of statutory restrictions have been promulgated or proposed that will significantly expand employee privacy rights in the workplace. Additionally, it is probable that unions will aggressively assert employee privacy rights within the context of collective bargaining, potentially using employee dissatisfaction with privacy intrusions as a basis for organizing nonunion firms.     

Ethik-Kriterien in Psychotherapie,Beratung und Supervision

In this article there are discussed four ethical standards which helpers can regard, when there are looking for orientations in their professional work: basic competence and basic performance, regarding the paradigmatic frame of reference, maturity of the helper, client support, and care for helpers mental health.     

“Hello! I know you help people here,right?”: A qualitative study of young people's acted motivations in text-based counseling

Mediated counseling services are becoming more and more common, thanks to the advance and availability of ICTs. The research on motivations for choosing such a service over a face-to-face one is a relatively new field of research and previous studies identified the most common motivations as narrated by clients in ex-post interviews. The present study aims to contribute to this field of research by identifying and describing how these motivations are directly enacted within the conversations between the counseling professional and the client. Twentyone WhatsApp conversations were analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis. Results show that motivations expressed ex-post by young people found in previous research (e.g. privacy and autonomy, control over the counseling process, anonymity, accessibility of text counseling) are present in the conversations, but are more complex and nuanced in natural discursive productions. The article also presents the pragmatic implications of these occurrences in the practice of mediated counseling.     

Predicting users’ privacy boundary management strategies on Facebook

This study examines the process by which Facebook users regulate their interpersonal privacy and information sharing. By tracing the influence of gender, Facebook usage, and privacy-protecting behaviors that are determined by knowledge and attitude, this research identifies a dynamic management process through which Facebook users maintain personal and interpersonal boundaries. Two distinct strategies are used – a privacy-setting control and a self-disclosure control. Based on data collected in a survey of 432 college students conducted in Hong Kong, our results suggest that different uses of Facebook activities (i.e., social interaction, social browsing, and entertainment) can be used to predict different boundary management strategies. Gender and privacy-related psychological factors (i.e., privacy literacy and concern about privacy) also showed significant effects. We concluded that the privacy setting options available on social networking sites such as Facebook were useful in providing users with a base point and a psychological sense of security, but they had little influence on the actual patterns of self-disclosure. To regulate their privacy boundaries, users were more likely to rely on frequently changing their privacy settings and on controlling their levels of self-disclosure.     

Social media,small businesses,and the control of information

Much of the discussion regarding privacy and social media has focused on consumers of social media, but social media is also popular among businesses. This article explores the privacy tensions of small business owners using social media to disseminate and gather information to better engage and serve their customers while maintaining customer trust. Drawing on Communication Privacy Management theory [Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Petronio, S. (2007). Translational research endeavors and the practices of communication privacy management. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 35(3), 218–222], we argue that there is a dialectical tension between control and engagement. As information is disclosed via social media, it creates new opportunities for engagement, surveillance, and commodification. Based on group interviews with small business owners, we identify the kinds of information that small businesses must manage as participants on social media platforms and the privacy rules they develop.     

Cognitive and behavioural assessment of people with traumatic brain injury in the work place: occupational therapists' perceptions

Cognitive and behavioural impairments, in the absence of severe physical disability, are commonly related to poor return to work outcomes for people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Along with other health professionals, occupational therapists make judgements about cognitive and behavioural dimensions of work capacity of clients with TBI during the return to work process. Unlike many physical functional capacity evaluations, there is no standard method that therapists use to assess the ability of people with TBI to perform cognitive operations required for work. Little is known about what information occupational therapists use in their assessment of cognitive and behavioural aspects of client performance within the work place. This study employed qualitative research methods to determine what information is utilised by 20 therapists who assess the work capacity of people with TBI in the workplace. Results indicated that the process of making judgements about cognitive and behavioural competence within the work place is a multifaceted process. Therapists triangulate client information from multiple sources and types of data to produce an accurate view of client work capacity. Central to this process is the relationship between the client, the job and the work environment.     

Phenomenology and intersubjectivity: considerations for webcam-facilitated psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

The clearest distinction between webcam-facilitated versus face-to-face psychotherapy is the available sensorial information. The following questions guide this discussion: 1. How do our senses inform the psychotherapeutic process? 2. What are the implications for the therapeutic process when sensory information is different than during face-to-face therapy? This examination of the role of the senses in the creation of knowledge is grounded in phenomenology. Individual unity of consciousness and reciprocal understanding are applied to literature on webcam-facilitated therapy. An amalgam clinical example illustrates these phenomenological concepts and role of intersubjectivity. The core issues are involvement of sensory processes in the process of psychotherapy and co-construction of knowledge. By accepting the limitations of therapist knowledge, the client is encouraged to articulate and develop their own knowledge, and make conscious their unconscious. It is not necessary for therapist and client to share a physical space for co-creation of knowledge necessary for client transformation.     

A qualitative study on the pros and cons of ethnically matching culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) client families and child protection caseworkers

A review of the literature indicated that empirical research into the advantages and disadvantages of ethnically matching child protection caseworkers and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) client families is not extensive. The main aim of this study was to address this gap. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 29 CALD client families and 17 child protection caseworkers (as part of a larger study). It was found that if CALD families fear a breach of confidentiality (because of cultural reasons to protect the family's privacy and name), and this fear exceeds the two main benefits of ethnic matching – namely, that it helps overcome language barriers and provides (cultural) sensitivity – then they are likely to prefer a non-matched caseworker. This may be a challenge in child protection practice if the pool of culturally competent caseworkers is small. Another challenge identified was when CALD families preferred an ethnic match but was seen by case managers as a risk to the accurate assessment of a child's wellbeing because the caseworker was over-identifying with the client family. Thus, the provision of a culturally sensitive service can be at odds with the need to protect children from harm. This issue is seen as best addressed on a case by case basis. This study is significant because it has shown that ‘over-identification’ is an important work practice issue in this matter. It has also used empirical evidence to inform best practice principles regarding ethnic matching.