Paradoxes in Social Work Practice

Mitigating Ethical Trespass

Merlinda Weinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138314818
• eBook ISBN: 9781317084211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

In the helping professions, codes of ethics and decision-making models have been the primary vehicles for determining what constitutes ethical practice. These strategies are insufficient since they assume that shared meanings exist and that the contradictory universal principles of codes can be reconciled. Also, these tools do not emphasize the significance of context for ethical practice. This book takes a new critical theoretical approach, which involves exploring how social workers construct what is 'ethical' in their work, especially when they are positioned at the intersection of multiple paradoxes, including that of two opposing responsibilities in society: namely, to care for others but also to prevent others from harm. The book is built on narratives from actual front-line workers and therefore is more applicable and grounded for practitioners and students, offering many suggestions for sound practice. It illustrates that an understanding of ethics differs from worker to worker and is heavily influenced by context, workers' values, and what they take up as the primary discourses that frame their perceptions of the profession. While recognizing the oppressive potential of social work, the book is rooted in a perspective that ethical practice can contribute to a more socially just society.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Introduction – The Paradoxes and Complexity of Ethics in Practice

Paradox 1 – Care and Discipline

There is a fundamental structural paradox at the heart of all practice for social workers. As agents of the state, they are at the intersection of responsibilities to both care and to discipline. In public agencies and community settings, help takes many forms: amelioration, control, adaptation, reform and structural transformation (Gil, 1998). Some of these dimensions advance an agenda to meet the ascribed goals for clients, while other goals in social work support and maintain broader societal mandates (for example, ensuring the protection of those most vulnerable in society) that can perpetuate the marginalization of service users. As a result, social workers are caught between an ethic that informs social work as a vehicle of social justice dedicated to “the welfare and self-realization of human beings” (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2005, p.3), and a bureaucratic regime where practitioners are responsible for social regulation and the ongoing discipline of others.

Social justice has been defined in a variety of ways (Gasker and Fischer, 2014), but for the purposes of this book, I am concerned about the redistribution of resources to foster a more equitable society. By discipline, I am referring both to “acts of punishment and correction and to fields of knowledge that diagnose deviance from the norm and intervene to remove it” (Chambon, Irving, and Epstein, 1999, p.271). However, not only does discipline work in repressive or autocratic ways, but also through the creation of new knowledges, focusing desires and energies in specific directions, and establishing what is taken as normative and adopted by individuals themselves (Sawicki, 1991). For example, given information about the health risks for cigarette smoking, a service user, in order to be a ‘good mother’ may decide she needs to quit this habit since it impedes the health of her foetus.

Discipline and regulation are central functions for helping professionals, as will be illustrated throughout this book. Therefore, this monograph explores how, if at all, it is possible to practice in an ethical fashion given the contradictions in the helping profession of social work.

What is more, there are other fundamental paradoxes in the nature of the helping relationship itself, which prevent the elimination of disciplinary and regulatory functions, while complicating the possibility of ethical, emancipatory practice. These paradoxes take the form of contradictory qualities, forces, tendencies, positionings or discursive frameworks that are well-established and assert the opposite of each other and are inherent in the work of practitioners. The additional paradoxes that will be examined in this book are:

Paradox 2 – More than one ‘Client’ in a Case

A structural anomaly exists for practitioners. The case¹ for social workers often involves more than one individual with differing and, at times, conflicting needs, for example, mother and child. Helping one may hinder the other. This conflict is exacerbated by organizations that may work with individuals in group settings, such as residences or classrooms. When there are a multiplicity of clients there is the possible amplification of conflicting wishes in which any outcome will potentially impact positively on some and not on others. And when the state is involved in contractual arrangements for services, might it be considered a client too? If this is the case, then the conflicts between the needs of society as a whole and that of individuals become even more complex.

Paradox 3 – Non-judgementalism vs. Need to Make Judgements

In the helping relationship itself, the principle of being non-judgemental is an underlying goal for workers and a dominant discourse in the profession. Being nonjudgemental is viewed as particularly important in order to engage clients in the early stages of the relationship. Despite the intention of being non-judgemental, workers are mandated to engage in dividing practices (Foucault, 1982), or techniques of power, that create categories and classifications that distinguish one individual from another and create hierarchies which involve judgement and the objectification of individuals. In the process, people are constructed as: well or ill; fit or unfit; healthy or pathological; and deserving or undeserving. Determining eligibility for emergency food or assessing a mother’s adequacy to parent, as illustrations, are ongoing enactments of judgements required of helping professionals in order to fulfill their responsibilities to the society-at-large. Furthermore, social workers have the mandate to develop knowledge as to what constitutes normal behaviour and then to evaluate whether individuals are meeting that standard. For example, assessing who is mentally ill or who requires admittance to a residential facility are tasks our society has authorized social workers to fulfill which ultimately contribute to normalization, “establishing the normal as a standard for judgment and against which to distinguish the pathological” (Chambon et al., 1999, p.276). Consequently, there is an inherent paradox between the requirement of judgement and non-judgementalism for practitioners.

Paradox 4 – The Setting of Norms vs. Encouraging ‘Free Choice’ and Client Empowerment

Practitioners contribute to moral regulation, processes that encourage individuals to accept certain practices, conditions and discourses as normative, taken-for-granted, or obvious, when in fact these are culturally and historically specific premises (Rousmaniere, Dehli, and deConinck-Smith, 1997). At the same time, workers value the principles of self-determination and self-empowerment for service users; believing that individuals should be making their own decisions, within limits concerning the rights of others. Nonetheless, professionals ‘help’ others towards ‘self-actualization’ by ascertaining what is normal, providing routes that foster self-discipline and regulation while attaching desire to individuals to be ‘normal.’ Individuals adopt these premises as their own, adhering “to explicit and implicit rules of conduct and norms of conscience” and believing themselves to be solely responsible for their own behaviour, as autonomous beings with choice to act morally or not (Rousmaniere et al., 1997, p.3). Epstein (1999, p.9) states,

This is certainly what social workers try to do, with the caveat – more observed in the breach – that the persons being transformed should want this, should consent to it, and should do it of their own free will. This is the principle of self-determination.

In this riddle of self-determination and moral regulation is a paradox: by the utilization of power, the helper ‘gives’ power to those helped to make ‘free’ choices and decisions for themselves.

Paradox 5 – Self-disclosure as Necessary and Risky for Clients

Another contradictory aspect of the helping relationship flows from the notion that the ‘good’ client is one who self-discloses. Yet, the more a client reveals, the more likelihood she² will divulge information that puts her at risk for being disciplined by a helping professional. At the same time, the client who does not reveal can acquire the psychological label of ‘resistant,’ leading to the risk of disciplinary practices as well. Workers are aware of this puzzle, particularly with mandated clients who are especially at risk when they reveal information that could, for example, result in further jail time or losing a child. This restriction impedes the formation of relationships. Further, it places workers in the position of being disciplinary agents whose primary function becomes surveillance of the client, rather than support for the personal transformation of a client.

Paradox 6 – Equality vs. Equity

One additional paradox is the unresolvable puzzle for workers of providing consistency to avoid favouritism versus offering dissimilar forms of help. This paradox is especially prevalent in group settings where the necessity of responding to the unique needs of individual clients who are different clashes with the needs for uniformity and impartiality. The perception of fairness in treatment of individuals is crucial to harmonious shared living situations. But there are times when special needs or circumstances require decisions that may seem to privilege one individual over another. This is the conundrum of equality versus equity; namely, treating everyone the same versus recognizing the need to respond to special circumstances or additional barriers for a particular individual. For example, dinner in a group home is served at 6 PM. But a Muslim client, celebrating Ramadan, cannot eat before sunset, which happens at 8 PM. A worker might give her permission to go into the kitchen and make herself a meal when generally clients do not have that privilege in that group home. Residents might resent the ‘special treatment’ she has received and not understand why, when given some situation in their own life, they were not granted the same exception.

A Question

Workers are aware of the dilemmas and tensions that arise from these conundrums, making their practice difficult, complex, and fraught with angst both for their clients and themselves. However, the inevitability of engaging in moral regulation runs concurrent to the potential for participating in social change. While social workers may collude in disciplinary practices, they may subvert and resist as well. This book explores the contradictions that arise, what forms they take in specific instances, how workers situate themselves within the contradictions, and how they resolve or live with the ambivalences and complexities that these paradoxes engender. Ultimately, the question is: what constitutes ethical practice given these core paradoxes?

The Traditional View of Ethics

In modern society, the study of ethics has traditionally been from a liberal-humanist perspective, which emphasizes principles to provide a basis for rational decision-making. Walker (1998, p.7) has referred to this approach to ethics as a “theoretical-juridical model.” This is a system of compact “law-like propositions that ‘explain’ the moral behavior of a well-formed moral agent” (p.7–8).

The primary tool for a theoretical-juridical approach is a code of ethics. A code of ethics is “usually a written document produced by a professional association, occupational regulatory body or other professional body with the stated aim of guiding the practitioners who are members, protecting service users and safeguarding the reputation of the profession” (Banks, 2004, p.108). Codes are seen as universally applicable and objective, with solutions rule-bound and prescriptive. An ideal is laid out as a series of abstract principles. It is assumed that by applying the code, with clear rules for implementation, in combination with good decision-making and a method for tracking harms (Barsky, 2010; Congress, 2000; Guttmann, 2006; Robison and Reeser, 2000), a worker can move towards the avoidance of ethical breaches.

In the profession of social work, there is more than one code to which a practitioner can refer. For example, in Canada, there is a provincial code (Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers, 2008), a federal code (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2005), and an international statement of principles (International Federation of Social Workers, 2012). While only one might be used for regulatory purposes (in the case of Canada, the provincial code), the others would offer guidance around values and principles for social workers.

Other countries identify different principles, or have alternate emphases from those in Canada. For example, the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers puts prominence on responsibilities to their Indigenous people and greater concern about diversity and its implications in ethics (2013). In some countries, in addition to the dominant perspective laid out by the body responsible for qualification or licensure, particular groups have devised their own codes as critiques of those prevailing orientations. For instance, in the United States, the National Association of Black Social Workers has designed its own code of ethics that stresses very different principles than those in the conventional USA code (nd).

There are several features of a theoretical-juridical model, according to Walker (1998, p.8–9). First, it rests on the assumption that moral beliefs can be understood and verified by the use of intellectual activity and logical enquiry. (Morality refers here to distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong). Secondly, it assumes that the activities of ethical deliberation are the responsibility of individuals for whom these systems of principles will provide the necessary guidance to make ethical decisions. Thirdly, the view allows for an impersonal approach that is outside of time, context, culture, history or the material circumstances of those involved in the decisions.

Several theories of ethics fall under the umbrella of a theoretical-juridical approach. The two major ones are deontology and utilitarianism. The concept of deontology, crafted by Immanuel Kant, starts from the premise that one can articulate universal principles that can serve as the foundation for ethical thought and deliberation. These principles spell out individual obligations (from the word Greek for ‘duty’) (Hugman, 2005b) and are good in themselves, regardless of outcomes (Nash, 2002). So for example, killing would be viewed as wrong regardless of the circumstances. Utilitarianism, developed by J.S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham, assumes that moral decision-making will include ascertaining the benefit of the decisions made (Hugman, 2005b). Consequently, one major basis for decision-making would be to discern whether a choice resulted in the greatest good for the greatest number or resulted in the least harm. An offshoot of utilitarianism is consequentialism, which focuses on the consequences of one’s actions (Gray and Webb, 2010).

A Critique of the Traditional Approach to Ethics and the Approach in this Book

Underlying the utilization of codes are some central assumptions (Weinberg and Campbell, 2014). Two of these are that there are universal values that apply to all peoples, often referred to as universalism (Hugman, 2010), and that there are shared meanings that are both possible and desirable to discern and utilize (Weinberg and Campbell, 2014). However, a counter-argument, referred to as relativism, is that values are specific to cultures and context, and no universal principles will be adequate to determine ethical practice. This debate in part has emerged from the criticisms that the supposed universal values are actually values that represent the perspective of Euro-Western countries, particularly those who are dominant in those countries (Hugman, 2010), and can lead to colonial domination and oppression of people elsewhere.

Another assumption is that conflicting principles can be reconciled. But some ethical principles are contradictory, preventing workers from using them as the sole means to resolve dilemmas (Weinberg and Campbell, 2014). An example would be that of self-determination for clients versus the need to act in the best interest of those who are most vulnerable (Weinberg and Campbell, 2014). And some principles are based on incommensurate values, meaning they cannot be compared (the old apples versus oranges issue). An illustration would be the dilemma of having to choose between an individual’s duty and that person’s well-being; such as an adult daugh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Discursive Fields And Ethical Issues
• 3 Micro Relations: Power, Judgement, and Emotion
• 4 Macro Relations: Broader Structural Issues In Practice
• 5 Mitigating Trespass
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix A: Interview Schedule
• Index