Module 7: Values and Ethics in Social Service Practice Flashcards
What is an Ethical Problem?
Identifying the right thing to do in a given practice situation
What are Ethical Dilemmas?
Choice by the SSW between 2 or more relevant but contradictory directives
What are Ethical Decision Making?
The process of analyzing and assessing the ethical dilemmas of practice in order to develop ethically appropriate professional behaviour
What is Client Self Determination?
The principle that clients have a right to autonomy and freedom of choice to make their own decisions
What is Paternalism?
The act of overriding the autonomous decisions of a person or making decisions for the person with the intention of benefiting the person
What are the elements of Client Self Determination?
- Freedom to choose
- Knowledge and information
- Access to resources
- Control and informed consent
- Involvement in decision making
What are Code of Ethics?
A collection of aspirations, regulations and guidelines that represent the values of a group or profession to which it applies; a complication of ethical standards
What are Ethics?
Branch of philosophy that deals with the rightness or wrongness of human actions
What are Values?
The customs, standards of conduct, and principles considered desirable by a culture, a group of people, or an individual
What are Ethics?
A system of moral principles and perceptions about right versus wrong and the resulting philosophy of conduct that is practised by an individual, group, professional or culture
What are the 8 core values?
- Service
- Social justice
- Dignity and worth of person
- Importance - Human relationships
- Integrity
- Competence
- Human rights
- Scientific inquiry
What are the purposes of the Code of Ethics?
- Protects public (clients) from negligence and malpractice, i.e. a mechanism for accountability
- Educates workers and the public about helping responsibilities
- Enforces standards of practice
- Provides a basis for improving practice
What are the limitations of the Code of Ethics?
- General guidelines, not precise action steps
- Does not always address the increasing complexity and diversity of life in the 21st century
- Opposing values create tension
- Ethical reasoning takes time, courage and effort
- Unethical behaviour may still go undetected
What is confidentiality?
A social worker or social service worker shall protect the confidentiality of all professionally acquired information. He or she shall disclose such information only when required or allowed by law to do so, or when clients have consented to disclosure
What are the 6 legal obligations of helping professional’s?
- Duty of care
- Duty to respect privacy
- Duty to maintain confidentiality
- Duty to inform
- Duty to report
- Duty to warn and protect