Ethical dilemmas in social work and theories
ETHICAL DILEMMA in social work
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 encounter ethical dilemmas every day during their work. Banks, in her explanations says these are occurrences whereby a social worker encounters two unwelcoming situations and there is a conflict of moral values, and there is no clear choice as to which decision to make.(Banks, 2006).To elaborate on this , Banks implies social workers are always in positions where they have to solve personal and at times difficult and painful issues as well as ethical judgements about welfare of service users. This is a huge challenge to social workers as these decisions may be life changing to service users, hence decisions taken have to be justified with valid reasons. Facts alone cannot determine decisions to be taken, hence ‘it would be impossible to make choices without values’(Beckett, Maynard 2005:7).Social workers need to have a strong value base when practising. It is , however possible for personal values of a social worker to clash with those of her professional ones, and in this case problems may arise. Banks refers to this occurrence as ‘conflict of moral values’ (Banks, 2006:13).Although it is essential for social workers to always follow professional values when personal values clash with them, personal values cannot be erased completely but these need to be kept under scrutiny and ‘kept under review, and be open to other arguments and other ideas’ (Beckett, Maynard 2005; 17).
On the other hand social workers use different theories to inform practice. Deontology, also referred to as Kantism is a theory derived from ideas of Kant(1724-1804), a
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 encounter ethical dilemmas every day during their work. Banks, in her explanations says these are occurrences whereby a social worker encounters two unwelcoming situations and there is a conflict of moral values, and there is no clear choice as to which decision to make.(Banks, 2006).To elaborate on this , Banks implies social workers are always in positions where they have to solve personal and at times difficult and painful issues as well as ethical judgements about welfare of service users. This is a huge challenge to social workers as these decisions may be life changing to service users, hence decisions taken have to be justified with valid reasons. Facts alone cannot determine decisions to be taken, hence ‘it would be impossible to make choices without values’(Beckett, Maynard 2005:7).Social workers need to have a strong value base when practising. It is , however possible for personal values of a social worker to clash with those of her professional ones, and in this case problems may arise. Banks refers to this occurrence as ‘conflict of moral values’ (Banks, 2006:13).Although it is essential for social workers to always follow professional values when personal values clash with them, personal values cannot be erased completely but these need to be kept under scrutiny and ‘kept under review, and be open to other arguments and other ideas’ (Beckett, Maynard 2005; 17).
On the other hand social workers use different theories to inform practice. Deontology, also referred to as Kantism is a theory derived from ideas of Kant(1724-1804), a