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MA Social Work: Foundations of practice

Brunel University London

Values and Ethics in social work practice
The legal and regulatory context 
‘Social workers have an obligation to conduct themselves ethically and to engage in ethical decisionmaking, including through partnership with people who use their services
...
’
Accountability
- To whom is the individual social worker accountable?
- Multiple and sometimes conflicting accountabilities
- Social work in the UK is governed by a Code of Practice produced by the Health Care Professions
Council (HCPC)
- HCPC is an occupational regulatory body set up to guide members, protect the public and safeguard
the reputation of the profession
...
’
The nature of values:
- Instrumental values: how we should or should not behave
Provide the moral or ethical guidelines that help determine how we conduct our lives, and as social
workers, how we perform our work
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These are the goals that a person/professional would like to achieve during his or her lifetime
...

- A person may be forced to choose among values that are in conflict with one another
...


- Addressing values in the abstract may be quite different from applying them in a real-life situation
...

Social work values 
The place of values in social work:
- Values clarification is an important aspect of social work practice
...
This is known as value suspension
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- Willingness to keep personal feelings and needs separate from professional relationships
- Willingness to persist in efforts on behalf of clients despite frustrations
- Commitment to a high standard of personal and professional conduct
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Life experiences and significant life events
...
Social work values
include ‘traditional’ values as we as more ‘emancipatory’ values
...

Ethical problems often arise because social workers:
- work with conflicting interests and competing rights
- have a role to support, protect and empower people, as well as having statutory duties and other
obligations that may be coercive and restrict people’s freedoms
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Traditional and emancipatory values 
- Traditional social work values (Biestek 1961 and Timms 1983)
- Individualisation: recognition of each client as a unique individual
- Purposeful expression of feeling: recognition of clients rights to express feelings
- Controlled emotional involvement: workers sensitivity to clients feelings, meaning of those feelings
and appropriate response
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- Non-judgemental attitude: social work does not include assigning guilt or innocence
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Blame and praise are examples of

judgemental attitude
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(The client’s right to confidentiality is not absolute
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)
- Client self-determination: the recognition of the right and the need of the client to have freedom in
making own choices and decisions in social work process
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Social workers often in the position of deciding whether service user’s wishes are permissible,
potentially exercising control over the lives of service users
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The critique of traditional values:
- that the focus is on the individual’s needs and does not take into account of the wider social
structural or socio-economic context in which people live and the factors that are beyond their control
to alter
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- The unique situation of the individual cannot be known unless you have got to know them
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- 3) Inequality excludes these groups from opportunities, meaningful participation in society and
quality of life
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(Mullaly 1993)
Structural social work:
- these views influenced the development of a more radical approach to social work
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’ (Mullaly 1993)
Emancipatory Social Work Values:
- anti-discriminatory practice
- anti-oppressive practice
- empowerment
- advocacy
- partnership
- service user participation
- social justice

Social justice  Includes ideas of equality and distributive (who should get what) justice
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This means: equal treatment, equal opportunity, equality of result and equality of
access to services is a means of ensuring social justice in social work
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Social workers can empower people by using the law, advocating, or signposting
people to sources of help
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- The origins of social work is imbedded in aspirations for social change and a more equal and fair
society
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- In an attempt to strengthen the status of the profession, social work turned towards emphasizing
knowledge development at the expense of its moral base
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- Relationship building, therapy and case management carried out by other professions too
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