Ethical Decision Making in Social Work and Counselling, 1st Edition

The focus of this text on ethical decision-making reflects the reality of practice in human services where we are increasingly faced with complex and contentious issues that by definition do not lend themselves to simple solutions. Part of the complexity arises from the deepening seriousness and complexity of questions, concerns, and problems service users present to us along with the multiple roles we play with the requirement to engage in inter professional practice with colleagues from a variety of allied professions. This all occurs within a context of conflicting directives from codes of ethics, legal requirements, agency policies with often inadequate or limited resources and service user needs and expectations. To assist in learning how to respond in an ethically thoughtful manner to this context, we have provided in this text decision making models, core concepts related to ethical practice, value clarification exercises, practice situations with inquiry questions and tasks to assist the reader to think through and become engaged with the ethical dimensions of the situations.