Social Work Ethics on the Line

Charles S Levy, Simon Slavin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781560242833
• eBook ISBN: 9781135906290
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Social Work Ethics on the Line discusses social work ethics in-depth and the process of making ethical judgements in social work practice. This much-needed book guides social workers through ethical dilemmas and assists them in their exercise of professional discretion without exclusive reliance on the codes of professional ethics to which they are committed. The author proposes a method to lead social workers through making ethical decisions which enables them to evaluate decisions in actual practice and in the adjudication of grievances and complaints of unethical conduct. This method is fully demonstrated in twenty-four vignettes representing situations commonly encountered by social workers in a variety of professional and educational situations. Raising the ethical consciousness of social work practitioners, trainees, and students, this book helps them develop the awareness and skills necessary for choosing ethical actions in their work. Social Work Ethics on the Line is an invaluable guide for social work practitioners, supervisors, administrators, and community organization workers. It is also helpful for in-service training in social agencies and undergraduate and graduate schools of social work.

Chapter I

The Many Splendored Sphere of Ethics

ETHICS AS VALUED CONDUCT

Ethics are the application of values to human relationships and transactions. Whatever the substance of exchanges between persons in personal, business, and professional relationships—whatever words, deeds, or material things pass between them —there are also understandings and expectations regarding the attitudes and behavior that are valued in the process. To the extent that these understandings and expectations guide and influence human relationships (and serve as a basis for evaluating human conduct), they represent the ethics of them.

Ethics regulate and control the behavior of participants in human relationships and transactions. In some situations ethics are more effective than in others, depending on the relationship between the participants; the transaction in which they are engaged; and the interest, influence, and authority of others in relation to both.

Although two friends may be concerned about, and even take seriously, others' reactions to what transpires between them, they are generally accountable to no one but each other for what they do or how they do it, unless, of course, laws are broken or actionable damage is inflicted in the process. If one friend, for example, promises the other to keep a secret and fails to do so, the result may be mutual alienation and perhaps disappointment and derogation, but rarely anything more serious.

However, a psychiatrist's revelation of the confidences of a patient, without the patient's permission or supportable justification, subjects the psychiatrist to penalties ranging from censure to deprivation of the right to practice. In each of the above cases the revelations may be considered unethical as long as keeping confidences is valued. The different effects are due to the nature of both the relationship and the transaction between the participants.

VALUES AND ETHICS

Values are essentially preferences, and ethics are preferences that affect behavior in human relationships. They may be the preferences of the participants in those relationships. Or they may be the preferences of others with interest in, and perhaps a degree of authority over, what goes on in them.

There are all kinds of preferences, some less consequential and more innocuous than others. Preferences that are simply a matter of individual or group taste are relatively arbitrary. Although tastes (according to the Latin maxim) are not supposed to be arguable, they are often argued about, sometimes vigorously and aggressively. Tastes in food, drink, music, art, and drama are argued. Often, those with one preference will not comprehend the preference of others. Individuals and groups feel so strongly about their preferences that it affects their attitudes and behavior towards others who do not share those preferences.

Unless religiously, ideologically, politically, or culturally reinforced, preferences in food, music, literature, art, charitable giving, and ideas are generally matters of individual or group choice. Their intensity varies widely and changes over time and in response to experience. Tolerance of differences varies as well, certainly between national and group cultures, but also within nations and groups. Ethics tend to be less variable although they, too, are subject to change. Conformity, moreover, is hardly universal.

Disagreement, difference, dissent, deviation, and ambiguity notwithstanding, the conduct valued in human relationships and transactions is left less to individual and group discretion than other types of preferences. For such types as well, biases and prejudices often lead to assault, deprivation, and discrimination against those who differ. Since these behaviors also involve the way in which some persons are treated by those with opportunity to put them at a physical, social, emotional, or economic disadvantage, they fit the perspective of ethics that guides this discussion.

VARIETIES OF ETHICS

Values associated with the duties and obligations of participants in human relationships and transactions are the result of group consent and consensus. These values are subject to myriad influences, both historical and philosophical; they also reflect the biases and concerns of those who promote and promulgate them.

Whatever the theoretical influences on the formulation and selection of values, practical ethics requires an appreciation of human relationships and transactions as well as the duties and obligations incurred by the participants.

Some of these duties and obligations inhere in the substance of the exchange. One undertakes to do a job or perform a service for the other in exchange for an agreed-upon fee. That is the substance of the exchange between them. Ethics represent the framework of values that guide and constrain the participants during the job or service. A plumber, for example, expects to have the access necessary for getting the job done; the customer is expected to pay for it. The customer, in turn, expects the plumber to do the job, and to do it properly. These are understandings and values that, aside from allowing everything to be done that needs to be done in a society, permit a society to function smoothly and fairly. These are the kinds of values that participants in human relationships and transactions are expected to live by as they attend to their undertakings in relation to one another.

At the Level of Society and Government

Varieties of ethics may be distinguished by the level at which the relevant ethics operate, whether as phenomenon or expectation. Society is one of the more inclusive levels of relationship at which ethics operate to impose value-based expectations on participants. Society and government have duties and obligations toward their constituents, and constituents have reciprocal duties and obligations. Some are legislated; some are implied; some are inferred. Whether enforced by police powers or social pressures, these duties and obligations are presumably designed to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the general welfare.

Duties and obligations of society and government toward constituents, and vice versa, define the responsibility each has in relation to the other. Government provides national security, public highways, health care, etc.; constituents provide taxes, obedience to the law, voting, etc. But duties and obligations go beyond the structure, means, and resources to fulfill the responsibility. Society and government declare the values to which they are committed, and those to which constituents are committed. Constituents are not (supposed to be) abused or treated arbitrarily by society and government. Nor do they cheat on taxes or bear false witness in court. Society and government encourage constituents to treat one another fairly, and induce a collective concern for the poor, the weak, the disabled, and the disadvantaged. Both society and government exercise courtesy and constraint when dealing with constituents. And both expect constituents to exercise courtesy and constraint in relation to one another. At least, that is what they are supposed to value in the fulfillment of their mutual duties and obligations.

Public and social policies are the vehicles through which those societal values are articulated that affect constituents and others. They reflect the ethics of society and government. They define expectations, and they guide their realization.

At the level of society and government ethics are often controversial. They are subject to the preferences of partisan politics and ideologies that sometimes defy consensus or resolution when they conflict. Decisions are made, however. Laws are passed. Courts deliver opinions. Principles are enunciated in public, social, and political arenas. With variable impact, depending upon the locus and authority of policies and their durability, values guide, if not govern, the various spheres of social and political life, even as dissent and debate persevere. Those values also guide and govern what society and government do. As such, they represent the ethics by which they and their constituents are guided and governed.

Within the array of social and public policies that reflect the ethics of society and government — aside from those that affect daily transactions with constituents and others — are policies that contend with some of the most troublesome and divisive value issues of our time. Because of reactions, when resolutions of those issues are indeed found, as in Supreme Court decisions, they often remain tenuous at best. Nevertheless, as decisions or the preponderance of views, they are the ethics of the moment, and represent conduct to be valued.

Conduct valued or disvalued in this category affects the removal of life supports; abortion; organ transplanting based on controversial definitions of death; the right to privacy; isolation of persons with AIDS; unconditional assistance to those in need of income, food, and shelter, etc.

Society's duties and obligations toward its constituents and others are expressed through preponderantly shared values and social pressures; those of government through legislative and administrative actions and through judicial decisions. Whether through encouragement of voluntary measures or enunciation of compulsory expectations, means and resources are provided that contribute to the health and welfare of constituents and others. The United States, for example, makes budgetary provision for emergency assistance to populations in states and nations afflicted by drought, flood, famine, and earthquakes.

Through volunteer and government organizations and procedures, provision is also made to safeguard the well-being of persons threatened by disease, by restricting the freedom of infected persons and providing, if not requiring, inoculation and quarantine. In addition, police and popular intervention forestalls or stops violence and the abuse of victims. In each of these cases, values are implied in both the objectives and conduct of society and government.

Even when an objective is clear and widely valued as societally and governmental^ obligatory—what is “owed” on the part of society and government to constituents and others as part of their relationship and their mutual responsibility— other contravening values intrude to inhibit or postpone action. How effectively depends on the effectiveness of the dissent. Mass inoculation, quarantine, or testing sometimes proves sufficiently controversial, despite the clear and present danger of an epidemic, to generate disruptive resistance. Some people value their own privacy and prerogatives more than they do what is purported to be the general welfare. These people are sometimes successful enough to change a societal or government value and to redefine ethical responsibility. At the moment, for example, the isolation of persons with AIDS is vigorously decried in some quarters. At the same time, others insist on it, exempting no one, including children who crave the opportunity to be educated alongside their peers. Feelings are strong despite some doubt about how contagious or how transmissible the disease is. An ironic turn to the separate but equal concept of education, discredited in 1954, was taken in one elementary school in which the only concession made to one child infected with AIDS was to cage her in a glass booth in a classroom.

The valuation of the general welfare is also not sufficient to overcome the revulsion experienced in response to experimentation with human beings that endangers them (perhaps fatally), or simply deprives them of needed service or treatment. This, despite the scientific objective of finding a cure for a devastating disease. This is particularly true if the experiment is done without knowledge or consent. Such experimentation, despite its benevolent and humane intent and potential contribution to science and medicine, conflicts with conduct valued in relation to those adversely and unfairly affected.

At the Level of Social Organizations and Agencies

As entities, social organizations and agencies carry ethical responsibility as well. They, too, enunciate policies that represent what they value to be done in their relationships with members, patients, and clients, and what they value in the way it is done. What they are chartered, created, or otherwise undertake to do, they commit themselves to do. They incur the responsibility to do it. They assume, or are charged with, the responsibility to protect children, provide health care, provide counsel, make social and recreational opportunities available, and so on. This is the work that they are established and sanctioned, by law or communal accord and support, to do. However, the consideration, concern, courtesy, respect, and regard with which they do their work, and the conscientiousness and accountability with which they acquire and employ the personal and material resources for doing it, represent their ethics. On one hand, their ethics are a function of their relationship and responsibility to those they serve or represent; on the other hand, they are a function of their relationship and responsibility to their community and society.

Organizations and agencies, as such, obviously do not act. The people in them —and those who represent and work for them —act. The policies of the organizations and agencies, their ethical commitments, become the commitments of their personnel and leadership. These commitments become what others expect of them by way of valued conduct. Upon them devolves the ethical responsibility articulated or implicit in organization and agency purposes and policies. This includes responsibility to members, patients, and clients as well as community and society. It also includes the ethical responsibility of personnel and leadership to one another. The ethical responsibility assumed by and attributed to individuals who, separately or collectively, act in and for organizations and agencies is of the same order as that of other personal and occupational relationships. The difference is that the former is incurred by individuals in their capacities as representatives of organizations and agencies and as implementers of organization and agency purposes and policies.

Providing the programs and services of organizations and agencies in a competent, humane, respectful, and considerate fashion (and without bias, prejudice, or discrimination) is a prime requisite of those organizations' ethics. As for their ethical responsibility to their communities and to society, it is reflected in whether they do in fact address the purposes for which they exist, and observe the policies they enunciate. It is also reflected in the honesty, economy, and integrity with which money, facilities, equipment, personnel, and other resources are employed, and in their relevance to the purposes for which they are intended.

Whether acting for, and on behalf of, organizations and agencies or society and government, the ethics of individuals affect whether they attend to their tasks as well as how. The payment and acceptance of bribes in the awarding of defense and other types of contracts affects the relative fairness of the bidding for and awarding of contracts. It also affects the quality and cost of the contracts. Similarly, the extortion of bribes by health and safety inspectors affects the fairness with which inspections are done. It also induces neglect of the function which the inspectors are assigned—with detrimental personal and physical consequences for consumers and personnel. Comparable effects are likely in organizations and agencies when duty is similarly neglected or compromised.

At the Level of Occupational Groups

Occupational groups and professions carry ethical responsibility as identifiable and responsible entities. Because of their status and functions in society, they often assert, or have ascribed to them, what they value for their members, for people in general, and for those they serve or with whom they do business. Through the circulation or codification of the ethics to which they as groups, subscribe, they publicly declare the ethics to which they and their members collectively are said to be committed, and the ethics that others may confidently expect of them.

Admittedly, it is difficult to conceive of an unethical conduct charge against an occupation or profession as a whole, but occupations and professions are usually concerned enough about their collective standing and t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Chapter I: The Many Splendored Sphere of Ethics
• Chapter II: Premises of Social Work Ethics
• Chapter III: Making Ethical Judgments in Social Work Practice
• Chapter IV: Application of Paradigm in Social Work Practice
• Chapter V: Learning and Teaching Ethics for Social Work Practice and Education
• Index