CRITICAL REFLECTION ON ETHICS
Venessa Bjork
The Situation:
A seasoned social worker employed by a community mental health center was seeking consultation on an ethical dilemma. The ethical dilemma is that one of her clients, Alice M., had committed suicide and her parents would like her to deliver a eulogy at Alice’s funeral. The social worker discussed how she wanted to be supportive, but she also was concerned about Alice’s confidentiality and boundaries with the family.
Dolgoff’s General Decision Making Model:
1. Identify the problem
The practitioner should focus mostly on disagreeing values related to the client’s privacy and worth, the parents’ right to self-determination, the social worker’s obligation to client well-being, and
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If the social worker were to give the eulogy, she may offer comfort to the client’s parents and possibly others who attend the funeral. The social worker may also obtain some comfort in the manner.
In contrast, giving the eulogy may compromise the client’s privacy and confidentiality. Those who attend the funeral may feel uncomfortable hearing the social worker’s comments, especially if the social worker reveals the nature of her relationship with the deceased. Also, the social worker’s status may be damaged (along with her agency and the social work profession) if those who are in attendance are disapproving of the social worker’s decision to give the eulogy.
If the social worker declines, the client’s parents may be angry and upset. Also, the social worker may feel some doubts as a result, particularly if the social worker’s rapport with the parents becomes stressed.
6. Select and implement using Ethical Principles Screen:
a. Principle 1: Protection of life (the preservation of life is the highest principle)
In regards to the protection of life, it is important to not forget that this includes the quality of life. One thing that is crucial in the principle is that we did not want to hinder the parents’ quality of life, especially after the death of their daughter. The social worker can do this by practicing his/her
In this paper, the role of a social worker will be addressed. A Human Service professional has, in its hands, the responsibilities in the life of the clients and families they meet. The tremendous and arduous responsibilities they take on include, but are not limited to, the well-being and care of people and their communities. Such roles can be helping others manage the care of a family member, assisting individuals experiencing problems with family relations and conflicts, dealing with changes that come with growing old, aiding those suffering mental illness and or those individuals struggling with addictions. Briefly
This essay will address the ethical dilemmas faced by social workers and how they address these ethical dilemmas when working with service users and carers. It will be illustrated that codes of practice and codes of ethics are of paramount importance when dealing with these dilemmas as they are ones that guide social workers as to how they should try and solve these dilemmas.
Social workers face complex ethical issues in every aspect of their profession. This work is often ethically challenging because it involves direct contact and interaction with individuals who are vulnerable. There are many factors that influence our decision making especially when working with at risk youths, we often face challenges in wanting to take on certain roles to protect our clients. These roles often conflict with our professional obligations. When our personal and professional values conflicts, our decisions may affect the individual, family, group, community and the organization.
Another strong ethical issue was the huge confidentiality issues that involves Susan and Savannah’s family. Susan reveals information about Savannah’s sessions while she was still in a medically induced coma, so clearly there was not permission to do so from Savannah or from a legal stance. The Code of Ethics prohibits this kind of behavior and as a social worker is not acceptable.
2. If I was in the social workers shoes and I was given the responsible of having to tell a family that their loved one died I would feel sick to my stomach. I would feel like this because it is never fun having to tell people bad news and I could personally never have to imagine
This essay will focus on how contemporary social workers work to balance the competing demand of care and control. It will start by outlining the nature of the contemporary social work and what it is like and how it works within society. The discussion will then move on to look at and discuss the key professional values of social work practitioners and analyse its relationship to their own personal values, this will also bring into account how these values and views influenced the relationship a social worker can have with both service users and other agencies. Lastly it will explore the range of challenges and dilemmas that are faced by social work practitioners in everyday practice when it comes to trying to balance the demand of care and control and how they work to overcome these problems in order to ensure an effective and fair service to all who avail of it.
The article, “10 Burdens Funeral Directors Carry”, written by Caleb Wilde expresses the unique struggles of those working the funeral business. They face numerous challenges through trying to aid and support those mourning a loved one. This often over looked and underappreciated field offers a salient as well as specific service desperately needed by each community. By encountering: depression, psychosis, isolation, stress, workaholism and death itself funeral directors make numerous personal sacrifices to continue to provide honor and respect to the dead.
The section of the National Association of Social Work Ethics that will be discussed will be number four which includes Social Workers’ ethical responsibilities as professionals. This ethics code concentrates on a several different factors which include: 4.01 Competence, 4.02 discrimination, 4.03 private conduct, 4.04 dishonesty, 4.05 personal impairment, 4.06 misinterpretations, 4.07 solicitations, and 4.08 acknowledging credit.
By listening and being socially supportive for individuals who experienced a significant loss is very important. Also, our society should give people a significant amount of time off to spend with family and cope with the death of a loved one. I believe people need to be more empathetic when interacting with individual’s who lost a loved one.
Social worker in a Family service is essential they understand the important of family, culture diversity and their needs. Social worker goals is to maintain family together, provide additional support if is need it, use problem-solving strategy to help families to resolve their problems, provide parents with parenting skills that will help them become better parents. In addition to that Child welfare information Gateway explain, the role of a child welfare in which consist of “… child protection consists of several key functions, many of which may occur continuously throughout the life of a case. Various assessments of risk, safety, child and family functioning, and trauma occur at screening, intake, investigation/assessment, ongoing child protection, and case closure” (web). Social worker make face with difficult situation and decision but they have to ensure the safety of a children who is in need of their services. They will be cases where the children did not want to participate however, a social worker job is to encourage the child to participate and express his or her
The social work profession’s Standards of Practice outlines the boundaries in the relationship between social workers and their clients and sets a mandate of their responsibilities as a social worker (Alberta College of Social Workers, 2013, p. 30). In the Code of Ethics, boundaries are also set at a high standard as we must draw metaphysical lines between personal roles or interests and professional (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2005, p. 7) to prevent forming a dual relationship with clients. Another boundary is to halt the possibility of the social worker from using the time they have to help themselves rather than helping their clients (CASW, 2005, p. 6). In addition to these boundaries, it is crucial for social workers to not share too much of their personal life with clients by placing mental boundaries of how much they feel they can share of their personal life with their clients.
An ethical issue results when social workers limit this right, although there are instances where it would be unethical to allow clients to make their own decisions if these decisions harm themselves or others, among other things. A large part of successful social work is an access to resources. It is incumbent upon social workers to advocate for such a right, both socially and politically (DuBois & Miley, 2014, p. 125). It is unethical for social workers to ignore the fact that their clientele may not have access to certain resources, which translates into not having access to more
Ethical issues in general, regardless of the profession or field one is in are inevitable. Social workers understand the value base of the profession and its value base of the profession and its ethical standards, as well as relevant laws and regulations that may impact practice at the micro and macro level (Segal, 2016). Although social workers are trained and understand ethical standards does not prevent them to one-day face ethical issues. According to (Reamer, 2014) we have embarked on a new period, one which few of us, he suspected, could have anticipated. Today’s social workers can provide services online or via video counseling or text messages to clients they never meet in person. They may receive Facebook friend request from clients or former clients that lead to boundary challenges. These boundary challenges as Reamer categorizes them are part of what he calls the Digital period. “Issues steadily arise even among segments of the population that one would expect to
Improving the lives of individuals is the objective of the social work profession. There is six values within National Association of Social work Code of Ethics (NASW): Service, Social Justice, Dignity, and Self-worth of the person, Importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. These values are for social workers and their work with the client(s). Regardless of one’s race, religious belief, sex or sexual orientation each value benefits all individuals. Social workers should always practice professional values. Clients suffer from when the social worker does not uphold values. Code of Ethics is established for all social workers to obey and follow them. In this this paper, I will discuss the how “Importance of Human Relationship” will be the easiest to uphold and how “Social Justice” will challenge me as a social worker working with future clients, community and organizations.
The social work profession consists of the six core values of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. These core values are portrayed within the roles of this profession by assessing and evaluating client’s needs, advocating for improving community resources, managing crisis situations, providing therapeutic support, and referring client’s to beneficial services. As well as, developing a dual client relationship to strengthen the helping process and treating each client ethically. Social workers are constantly progressing their professional expertise. They do this