Social workers are expected to show professionalism and competence in their ethical handling of client situations. You may encounter ethical dilemmas in social work situations that challenge your comfort levels and pose risks to your professional behavior. Social workers can consult their teams, supervisors, and ethics boards for guidance with ethical dilemmas as they arise. Your responsibility as a social worker is to identify potential ethical issues, consult the NASW Code of Ethics, and determine the professional behaviors that would be appropriate for addressing different dilemmas based on the factors in each situation. The more you practice demonstrating professionalism in challenging situations, the better you will be able to remain calm under stress for the sake of your clients and your personal well-being.
For this assessment, you will take the perspective of a social worker who is meeting with an ethics board to explain ethical issues that arose in several of your cases. You will prepare a report to explain how you responded to various ethical dilemmas.
Select 3 case study scenarios from the following list to use for this assessment:
- Scenario 1: You have been working with a client consistently for a long time. The client surprises you during the holidays by giving you a gift and expresses how thankful they are for all you have done for them.
- Scenario 2: One of your clients has a yard care business that has fallen on hard times financially. As a result, the client is unable to pay for services. They are very invested in continuing services and have offered to provide free yard care services in exchange.
- Scenario 3: One of your co-workers has come to you for advice about a client they have worked with for some time. The client is progressing significantly toward their goals but has recently expressed romantic feelings toward your co-worker. Your co-worker says they reinforced professional boundaries with the client but admits they have felt similar romantic feelings. You are not their supervisor.
- Scenario 4: A client comes to you to find resources in their community for help addressing multiple needs in their life. During your assessment of the client’s needs, you discover that they have a significant substance use issue that is having a negative effect on many of their other needs. When you suggest a referral for substance use services, your client tells you frankly that they have no interest in addressing their substance use.
- Scenario 5: A client discloses that they are gay and have suffered trauma related to how their family’s religious beliefs prohibit sexual relations with individuals of the same gender. Your religious beliefs are different from their family’s beliefs. Your client is conflicted and largely continues to believe in the same religious principles as their family, but they have doubts about what to believe.
- Scenario 6: You are part of a team in an agency that is putting together an annual report about the efficacy of their services. When the data is collected, the results suggest that the services they are providing are not as effective as hoped. The agency fears that the data could be harmful if released, so they decide to leave out some of the cases they think would unfairly skew the data against the agency. The revised data falls in line with the agency’s goals, so they publish the revised data in their annual report.
- Scenario 7: While providing services for a family, you hear your client express a concern about the severity of their spouse’s disciplinary style with their child. Your client mentions that they worry about the yelling and how hard the spankings are and asks you for advice. They tell you that they don’t want you to share this information with anyone because they don’t want to “get into trouble” and have their spouse retaliate against them or the child.
- Scenario 8: A family member of one of your clients calls you for help because they are very worried about their loved one, who seems to be in crisis and may be suicidal. In the past, your client provided a release of information so that you could collaborate with this family member, but they have recently asked you to keep the details of their case private from family.
- Scenario 9: You are a child welfare supervisor and there are only 2 other child welfare workers in your office. A 16-year-old female client discloses that she is pregnant, wants to explore her options, and expresses that she is thinking about an abortion. She does not want her birth or foster parents to know. Both of the social workers you supervise have told you that they are morally opposed to abortion and are not comfortable working with this client.
- Scenario 10: You are staffing a case with your supervisor about a juvenile client who is transgender. During the discussion, your supervisor comments that this individual is likely just seeking attention and will probably bounce back and forth between gender identities. Your supervisor encourages you to avoid conversations about gender and to focus on other aspects of this client’s needs.
Assessment Deliverable
Select one of the following formats for your assessment:
- A 700- to 1,050-word written report
- A 2- to 5-minute video or screencast of yourself with a transcript of your speech.
- You may write a script first then read it aloud or you may record yourself speaking and use a tool like Otter.ai or another audio-to-text transcription tool to generate a transcript of your speech. (If you use a tool to transcribe your speech, be sure to revise any errors in translation before submitting the completed transcript.)
- List citations with your transcript.
- If you record a video of yourself, either by appearing on screen or by recording a voiceover, paste the link to your completed video with your script.
For your assessment, describe the professional behaviors expected of social workers in each of the 3 selected scenarios as if you were explaining to the ethics board how you handled these ethical dilemmas. Include the following:
- Identify the values and ethical principles from the NASW Code of Ethics relevant to each scenario and explain why they are relevant in each case.
- Explain why each scenario is an ethical dilemma. Identify the ethical principles involved.
- Identify your responsibility for professional behavior as the social worker in each scenario. Explain the course of action needed to address the dilemma in each case and how you handled the conflicting values.
Cite any sources that you used to support your responses according to APA guidelines.
Submit your assessment and include a link to your video if applicable.
