There are no Answers,Only Choices: Teaching Ethical Decision Making in Social Work

Abstract

In teaching students about ethical decision making in social work, it is essential that the students are able to recognise the moral implications of their work and develop a deep understanding about ethical issues and their personal responsibility for making ethical choices. Thus, more than a “how to do it” approach is needed and teaching students about values and ethics is an essential thread that runs through our experience-based social work education program. The present paper describes a learning unit that sought to teach students about ethical decision making as a critical thinking process and, in so doing, to integrate students’ knowledge and experience of values, ethics, policy, and research in the final year of study. The relationship between values, ethics, policy, research, and social work practice provided an ideal context within which students could learn to integrate their knowledge and experience and apply it directly to their fieldwork practice. The paper ends with our critical reflection on this teaching experience and a critique of decisionist ethical frameworks.     

Human research ethics committees and ethical review: The changing research culture for social workers

Social workers have a long-standing concern with developing codes of ethics, which govern and protect those involved in practice and research scenarios. As more social workers engage in research, successfully negotiating the ethical review process becomes imperative. In Australia, the task of ensuring ethical compliance of research protocols resides with human research ethics committees (HREC) mandated under the National Health and Medical Research Council. However, given the scope for discretion exercised by HREC, this process can be intimidating to novice and experienced researchers. The review process needs to be understood in the context of Australian ethics policy, the roles and responsibilities, and cultures of HREC. This paper outlines practical strategies in preparing ethics protocols to increase the likelihood of successful review. To do this, social workers need to recognise the way policy, legal developments and risk management strategies influence the ethical review process.     

The role of narrative in public relations ethics pedagogy

Competence in ethical decision making is one of the most important issues in the industry and practice of public relations, yet professionals entering the discipline overestimate their knowledge and skills related to ethical principles. This article features a pedagogical approach to strengthen ethics education in public relations through the use of collaborative student-professional ethics narratives. This technique attempts to move beyond a traditional case study approach and transcend traditional classroom boundaries through the development of narratives featuring real ethics situations experienced by public relations professionals. The project involved the development, implementation and assessment of the pedagogical approach that required students to interview local communication professionals (mostly in public relations) and to craft narratives that explore ethical dilemmas these professionals faced. Pre- and post-test surveys and group feedback helped explore the impact of narrative inquiry in helping students internalize ethical lessons.     

How to make good choices? Ethical perspectives guiding social workers moral reasoning

Framing and distinguishing mainstream social work ethical perspectives could be useful for social work students and practitioners facing moral choices in daily practice. The article presents a summary and classification of a range of ethical theories and provides some insights into the relationship between ethical thinking and practice issues. It distinguishes between classical approaches and ‘situated’ positions. The former – which includes teleological, deontological, and rights-based approaches – refer to universal and general principles. ‘Situated’ ethics are linked to specific and unique situations of professional practice. Finally, the article suggests some useful questions derived from each approach in order to help students to reflect on complex ethical choices occurring in daily practice.     

Ethical assessment and moral reasoning in child therapy

Social workers find it hard to operationalize the profession's Code of Ethics, and few professionals even rely on the Code, as a point of reference in making judgments when faced with ethical dilemmas. Children and adolescents hold a special position in clinical practice. Issues requiring ethical judgments are more complex, because any intervention involves people other than the child. How the professional meets the interests of the parents and those of the child, is frequently a cause for conflict. This article presents philosophical models of moral reasoning, and ethical assessment, to assist clinicians in identifying and resolving frequently faced practice dilemmas, with the goal of improving the quality of patient care, in terms of both the process and the outcome. Emphasis is not only on the ethics of the actual decision but also on the ethics of the decision-making process itself.This article is based on the author's unpublished dissertation, seminars, and grand rounds presentations on applied ethics in clinical social work. Additionally, this author has had consultative and collaborative contact with the Hastings Center, Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Science.     

Do current consent and confidentiality requirements impede or enhance research with children with learning disabilities?

Recent changes in UK legislation on data protection and confidentiality have affected key aspects of the research process. They have led to much stricter approaches to research governance, leading in turn to more stringent scrutiny by medical ethics committees and National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. Almost all stages of research are affected, from participant recruitment to storage of data, eating into researcher time and consuming significant resources. The resulting constraints are examined in relation to a research programme on development in children with learning disabilities, highlighting the practical and ethical issues arising, with informed consent a particular challenge. Being multidisciplinary, learning disability research has to satisfy numerous regulatory bodies. For participants' rights to be fully respected and for projects to be completed within time and on budget, all contributors to the research process, including funders, need to be aware of the additional implications and demands imposed by the new regulations.     

The Social Construction of Social Work Ethics: Politicizing and Broadening the Lens

Structural barriers and the intrinsic paradoxes of practice often lead to a discrepancy between what a social worker would like to do and what that individual actually implements, resulting in ethical tensions. However, the canonical approach to ethics has had a narrow perspective on what constitutes ethics and has tended to treat these issues as peripheral rather than central to the social construction of ethics. This essay provides an explanation of how the construction of ethics evolved and what interests are served by this viewpoint, thereby illuminating the political ramifications of the current social construction. The author suggests ways to broaden the lens of focus.     

Research ethics committees: values and power in higher education

The rise of research governance structures in universities has created huge disquiet amongst academic researchers. The unquestioning adoption of a medical model of ethical review based upon positivist methodological assumptions has created for many a mismatch between their own ongoing ethical research practice and the process of obtaining clearance from Research Ethics Committees (REC). This paper examines the issues that have contributed to dissatisfaction with the ethical review model that is prevalent within the modern university. Using examples from the authors’ own experiences, the dynamics of values, interests and power in research governance is examined from multiple perspectives including that of REC member and applicant; lecturer/student supervisor; researcher; and university administrator. The paper reveals a rift between the values and objectives of the key players in research governance within the modern university and concludes by asking whether differences can be resolved so that a collaborative approach to ethical review may be incorporated into a renewed academic research culture. It is suggested that the alternative is increasing alienation from anything to do with ‘ethics’, with potentially serious consequences for the ethical standards of social research.     

Career Coaching: Practice,Training, Professional,and Ethical Issues

The authors address the practice, training, professional, and ethical issues of career coaching and propose recommendations regarding the professional organization, training, certification, code of ethics, research, and multicultural issues related to the field.     

Morals,Ethics and practice — in search of social justice

Abstract

This paper reports a study of sources of influence on moral and ethical decision-making in social work practice. Practitioners from ten government and five non government agencies kept journals about the main moral issues they faced over a one-month period and were then interviewed about the nature of those issues, their resolution and the influences that shaped those resolutions. Practitioners' personal moral perspectives were found to be the main sources of influence on resolutions to a wide range of dilemmas and most of those resolutions did not conform to accepted social wok ethical practice principles. Even though the results of this study are drawn from a small sample, some implications are suggested for practitioner development, professional ethics and social work education.     

The Child's Voice in Service Evaluation: Ethical and Methodological Issues

This paper examines the ethical issues which arose as part of a qualitative study with children who had experienced sexual abuse and the implications of these ethical issues for the methodology and conduct of the study. The ethical dimensions addressed include protection of the therapeutic relationship, anonymity, confidentiality, safeguarding (child protection), consideration of the sensitivity of the issue, informed consent, the right to withdraw and storage of data. The study formed one component of a service evaluation of a network of therapeutic projects provided by Action for Children, offering interventions for trauma following child sexual abuse. Children and young people's perspectives were collected using a child‐friendly activity book designed to elicit their views on the service. The paper highlights the importance of conducting research which adheres to ethical guidelines and reflects upon the process of designing a study which incorporates them. The research was funded by Action for Children and managed by a steering group comprising managers from the organisation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Ethical Theories in Decision Making by Social Workers

This study analyses the arguments provided by a convenience sample of 62 Israeli social workers for their preferred ethical principles in terms of ethical theories. Content analysis of arguments given in four different contexts shows that the large majority of social workers in the study based their arguments on either deontological or utilitarian ethical concepts, less frequently using concepts from virtue theory, rights theory and care theory of ethics. However, the analysis reveals a discrepancy: when social workers were requested to justify their rank ordering of ethical principles without reference to a specific practice situation, they most frequently preferred concepts reflecting deontological theory of ethics, such as right intention, universalism, and duty. In contrast, when confronted with a specific practice situation, the social workers' most frequently chosen concepts were relating to results, consequences, and utility, concepts identified with the utilitarian theory of ethics. In view of the findings, the need for more thorough knowledge of a variety of ethical theories and their potential role in ethical decision making in social work practice and education are discussed.     

A Glimpse of the Truth: Evaluating ‘Debate’ and ‘Role Play’ as Pedagogical Tools for Learning about Sexuality Issues on a Law and Ethics Module

Social work education is familiar with concepts such as social exclusion, marginalisation, anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice. This familiarisation implies that students are adequately prepared to embrace equality and diversity, become ‘culturally competent’ and subscribe to moral and ethical standards including the rights of service users to respect and support regardless of sexual orientation. The ability of social work students to articulate and develop their own theories for practice and to handle personal issues when these conflict with ‘theories’ on equality and diversity are important aspects of learning. Educators teaching about sexual orientation issues however currently have fewer texts or support networks to draw on when addressing these. This paper looks at the effectiveness of ‘debate’ and ‘role play’ as pedagogical strategies and tools when teaching complex ethical issues on a law and ethics module. Dramatic and creative participative methods were used through the tools of debate and role play. These were used with students to explore a specific topic around gay adoption in the context of learning about anti-discriminatory law. The paper seeks to evaluate the outcomes of this approach by drawing on the students' post learning reflection.     

Raising the Titanic: Rescuing Social Work Documentation from the Sea of Ethical Risk

Abstract

One of the most contentious issues in social work practice concerns what should be written about people who access social work services, how comprehensively, and in what format social work assessments, interventions, and outcomes should be documented. The present paper describes a structured approach linked to an action research project that was undertaken by hospital-based social workers to identify and minimise problems associated with documentation in the medical record. The Social Work Ethics Audit provided social work staff with a risk-management tool that highlighted documentation as a key area of ethical risk. Through a process of evaluating existing recording practices, social workers were able to meet the challenge of improving social work recording in medical records, returning it to its proper place as a vital component of clinical and ethical practice rather than an administrative task submerged beneath competing priorities. It was anticipated that the social work documentation proforma that resulted from the ethics audit process would have applicability in other health care settings.     

A Model of Comparative Ethics Education for Social Workers

ABSTRACT

Social work ethics education models have not effectively engaged social workers in practice in formal ethical reasoning processes, potentially allowing personal bias to affect ethical decisions.¹ Using two of the primary ethical models from medicine, a new social work ethics model for education and practical application is proposed. The strengths and weaknesses of specific extant social work and medical models are reviewed and addressed by the new model and its educational process. The development, components, and use of the social work model are detailed, and an education process example is provided.     

Cultural and ethical considerations in late-life polyvictimization

ABSTRACT

This article examines the cultural and ethical considerations for professionals working with older adults who experience polyvictimization. Drawing from the Department of Justice training program, Polyvictimization in Later Life (OVC/TTAC, 2017), topics include cultural competencies, ethical standards, personal and professional ethics, and ethical considerations when working in teams. Also described are specific suggestions and recommendations to ensure sensitive and ethical responses when working with cases involving polyvictimization.     

“I've never seen a client say: ‘Tell the influencer not to label this as sponsored’”: An exploration into influencer industry ethics

Previous research on influencer industry ethics has focused on three issues: transparency of collaborations, payments to influencers, and influencer authenticity. In this exploratory study, we demonstrate that influencer industry ethics is more complex. We interviewed 28 representatives from different actor groups in the German influencer industry (influencers, client organizations, and intermediaries such as influencer marketing agencies) to systematically identify ethical issues and the moral expectations underlying these issues. In analyzing the interview data in a qualitative content analysis, we identify ten ethical issues: autonomy, transparency, sincerity, truthfulness, caring, professionalism, reciprocity, respect, loyalty, and social responsibility. Our study adds to the body of knowledge by further substantiating the discussion on transparency, payments, and authenticity; by introducing previously neglected ethical issues; by organizing the field of influencer industry ethics; and by explaining how the specific constellation of ethical issues in the influencer industry levels out the distinction between sponsored and organic content. In doing so, we argue for a broad perspective on influencer industry ethics that positions influencer communication at the intersection between Public Relations, advertising, and journalism.     

Risk Management in Online Human Services Practice

SUMMARY

The growing use of the Internet for human service practice has resulted in ethical and legal issues that have yet to be fully addressed by current professional codes of ethics and the courts. This paper describes issues and risk-management procedures related to online human service practice, including: use of novel and untested services, unclear jurisdiction, equivalence of face-to-face and online practice, duty to warn and to provide emergency services, privacy and security of online transactions, establishment of fiduciary relationships, online assessment, and fees for online services. In addition, risk-management issues related to human service agency Web sites including copyright, ownership of the Web site, posting of staff names, online fundraising, online threats and disruption of services, unsolicited e-mail, and agency e-mail policies are discussed.     

Chapter Five

This chapter briefly discusses the development of Adult Protective Services (APS) programs in the United States in relation to federal law and policy, depicting the variety in such programs among the states. The chapter then describes ethical values and protocols as well as systemic constraints in pulic agency practice. These concepts and issues are applied to the three case examples, illustrating the need for multidisciplinary cooperation and coordination to gather the information and resources necessary to resolve the presenting problems.