Values and Ethics in Social Work

Chris Beckett, Andrew Maynard, Peter Jordan

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526413772
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Sozialarbeit

An awareness of one's own ethical assumptions and how these inform everyday practice is crucial for all student social workers. Social workers who genuinely wish to do the right thing by their services users have no alternative but to constantly think and rethink the principles and assumptions that inform their actions, and this book supports them on their journey to do just that. This third edition is set out in two parts: Part I deals with broad ideas about values and ethics in general, looking at philosophy, religion and politics, as well as the duty of realism. Part II takes the discussion further, looking at how these general principles are relevant to everyday practice, with chapters on the use and misuse of power, the idea of self-determination, and the challenges of working with people whose experience and outlook are different to one's own.

Part I Foundations of Values and Ethics

1 What are Values and Ethics?

• What do we mean by ‘values’?
• Values and value systems
• Values and social work
• Personal values
• Societal values
• Values in tension
• What do we mean by ‘ethics’?

Values occupy a central position in social work because the job, like that of other helping professionals, constantly places us in the position of having to make ethical decisions: decisions about what is the right thing to do, not in a technical sense, but in a moral one. This book explores issues to do with values and ethics that you will encounter, both in your training and in practice. Since this first chapter will begin by discussing what we mean by those terms, you might like to put the book down before you go any further, and attempt to write your own definitions so you’ll be able to compare your own perspective with ours. What are values? What are ethics?

What do we mean by ‘values’?

Value

1. ‘… the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth or usefulness of something: [as in] your support is of great value …’.
2. ‘… principles or standards of behaviour: one’s judgement about what is important in life: [as in] they internalize their parents’ rules and values …’. (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2010)

The word ‘value’ is used in a number of ways which, at first sight, do not seem to have a huge amount in common. It is used in a financial way, as in ‘gold has a higher value than lead’, or in a personal way, as in ‘I value your company’. Or we can speak of values in a cultural sense, as in ‘Islamic values’, ‘liberal values’, ‘value systems’.

However, although ‘the value of gold’ and ‘value systems’ seem like very different kinds of idea, there is nevertheless a common ground of meaning. It lies in the notion of preference or choice. When we say to someone ‘I value your company’, what we are really saying is that their company is important to us, and that we would choose their company over other things. If an expert on jewellery values your gold ring at £200, he is saying that given the choice between the ring and a sum of money, you should not choose the money unless it is £200 or more.

Similarly, when we speak about the ‘value system’ of a particular culture, we are referring to the things that culture gives a high priority or importance to when making choices. In a liberal democracy, for instance, a high value is given to personal freedom (‘Everyone has the right to liberty’, says the European Convention on Human Rights). In other societies, personal freedom may be seen as less important than other things, such as the observance of religious rules, or family loyalty, or social cohesion. Different cultures use different sets of criteria to make choices, presumably as a result of different circumstances and different traditions.

Of course, even within a single culture, people have different values. In the UK, the 2016 referendum on ‘Brexit’ from the European Union revealed a sharp divide between different parts of the country, different age groups and different social classes as to what should be the priorities of the country as a whole. Because we tend to associate with people who have similar views, in real life and on social media, we are not always very aware of the diversity of views that are out there. The outcome of the referendum came as a shock to a lot of people who voted ‘remain’, perhaps in part because many had only discussed the subject with people whose views were like their own, and therefore imagined that most people felt the same as they did.

Our values are the basis on which we act. Imagine you are driving to an important meeting – about, say, the future of a child in care – to which you feel you have an important contribution to make. You are on a motorway driving at over 70 mph, but due to being held up earlier in the journey, you are in danger of arriving late. Should you drive even faster? If you go faster, you are more likely to make your meeting on time and be able to make your contribution, but you are also more likely to have a crash and hurt someone, and of course (in the UK) you would be breaking the law. These are the facts of the matter. However, the facts alone cannot tell you what you ought to do. All they can do is tell you the available possibilities. (This principle is sometimes known as Hume’s law, after the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, 2007 [1739]: 335, and is often summarised as ‘you can’t derive an ought from an is’.) In this case your decision as to what you ought to do will be based on what value you place on arriving on time as against the value you place on not endangering yourself and other drivers and/or on sticking to the law.

In the social arena, the word ‘ought’ usually carries the implication of some sort of obligation either to others or to our own future selves (as in ‘I really ought to stop smoking’), and it refers to a duty to be fulfilled by either an individual or a group of individuals. The question as to how precisely we arrive at these duties, or ‘oughts’, is something that we will come back to in the next chapter.

Values and value systems

At any given moment of time, we value different things, and this may vary according to our mood or circumstances, but most of us also subscribe to a set of values, a ‘value system’, that is not so readily changeable and which some of us may even be able to give a name to: ‘I am a Muslim’, ‘I am a socialist’, ‘I am a feminist’, ‘I am a conservative’.

For most of us, beliefs of these kinds are an important cornerstone of our existence, acting as a filter which defines the things we accept or reject, and as a driving force that makes us jump one way as opposed to another. They shape the way we think, the judgements we make, the perceptions we hold about people, and the companions we choose to spend our time with. They are an important part of how we define ourselves, and yet they are never completely our own creation. It is even sometimes argued that whole nations can be defined in terms of a kind of value system:

David Cameron [the former British Prime Minister] will today signal a sea-change in the government fight against home-grown terrorism, saying the state must confront, and not consort with, the non-violent Muslim groups that are ambiguous about British values such as equality between sexes, democracy and integration.

To belong in Britain is to believe in these values, he will say. (Wintour, 2011)

One might well ask if it is really possible to say that someone who doesn’t believe in democracy or in the equality of the sexes is somehow not really British. After all, until 1928, most women in Britain were denied the vote, but presumably the people who lived then were not less British than we are now!

The very contentiousness of Mr Cameron’s remarks illustrates an important aspect of value systems. They are usually contested. Two British people may both be proud of their British values, and yet disagree profoundly about what British values consist of. (Again, the 2016 referendum springs to mind!) Two Muslims may both be strongly committed to Muslim values, yet may still disagree at a very basic level as to what Muslim values are. And this applies to ‘social work values’ too. We can all agree they are important, but we may still disagree as to what they include, or how they should be applied.

These are complicated questions, but for the moment we suggest you might like to give some thought to your own value system, and how it interacts with the value systems of others.

Exercise 1.1 The values behind your choices

The following are examples of different kinds of choice. Think about how you would decide on what choice to make in each case, and ask yourself what set of values you would base your choice on:

• Your daughter is exceptionally able academically. A wealthy relative offers to pay for her to attend a prestigious private school, where she will be able to have much more individual attention from teachers and a programme much more tailored to her individual needs than she would at your local comprehensive. Do you accept the offer?
• In a supermarket you have a choice between buying two packets of tea of similar quality: one is more expensive because the company that produces it pays a good price to the growers; the other is cheaper because the company that produces it pays the absolute minimum to the growers that it can get away with. Which one do you choose?
• You are married. Your partner’s best friend tells you that they find you very attractive and suggests an affair. Do you tell your partner about this incident?
• You are a social worker. You are visiting a single parent who is struggling emotionally and financially. She tells you that she is supplementing her income by dealing in crack cocaine, and asks for your assurance that you will tell no one about it. What do you say?

Comments on Exercise 1.1

The choice you make will probably be based in part on your estimation of the likely outcomes of the various choices available to you. (Do you think your daughter would enjoy being in a private school and do well there?) But it will also be based on what value system you subscribe to. (Do you believe in private education? Do you think openness is always the most important thing in relationships, or is it sometimes better to keep things to yourself?) Often these kinds of decisions are difficult because they entail balancing competing, and perhaps contradictory, values. (‘I think my daughter would be happier in the private school and I believe I ought to do my very best for my daughter, but I also disapprove of private schooling’; ‘I want to be truthful with my partner, but I don’t want to wreck a friendship’.)

In the last example, however – where your client admits to dealing in drugs – the decision to be made is not simply a personal one. Your agency would have its own expectations and perhaps written guidelines about how to deal with such a situation (for example, guidelines about confidentiality and its limits).

Values and social work

The final example in Exercise 1.1 illustrates that when we move from our private life to our professional life, the concept of ‘values’ takes on an additional dimension. Value questions don’t go away when we put on our professional ‘hat’ – far from it – but they cease to be purely personal. As Kerstin Svensson observes:

Outside the organization, ‘doing good’ is just a personal matter … Within the organization, social work does not just entail ‘doing good’ but also includes the exercise of power and influence … It is thus necessary to understand the concept of ‘doing good’ from a perspective where the organizational aspects are taken into consideration. (2009: 235)

In other words, when you are a paid professional, you cannot just pretend that your relationships with your clients are of the same kind as your relationships with people you know in your private life, for you carry the powers and responsibilities conferred on you by your job. All professions therefore have ethical codes which aim, among other things, to prevent the abuse and misuse of power, and social workers in particular, because they typically work with the least powerful people in society, need to be aware of the exercise of power and control that they are actually engaged in on a daily basis.

In social work, you will be constantly involved in judgements in which competing values have to be weighed up, and you will have a number of different frameworks, sometimes contradictory or contentious, within which to make these decisions.

The Level of Legislation

Various principles are enshrined in the framework of laws, policies, government guidelines and agency rules within which social work operates. These principles are based, implicitly or explicitly, on certain values, as Exercise 1.2 illustrates.

Exercise 1.2 Values implicit in laws

In English and Welsh law, the 1983 Mental Health Act, Section 3, states that an Approved Social Worker (or an Approved Mental Health Professional, following the changes made by the 2007 Mental Health Act) can make an application for a person to be admitted to hospital and detained there for treatment, only if certain conditions are met, including that:

• he is suffering from mental illness, severe mental impairment, psychopathic disorder or mental impairment and his mental disorder is of a n...