Membership in the Target Community. One of the more difficult issues in community organizing practice among social workers is that many organizers are members of the community they seek to organize.
In this exercise you will walk a potential ethical dilemma through a framework. There are a number of frameworks you can utilize when making ethical decisions this is an example for this assignment.
Vignette: You are the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization that provides after-school programming for adolescent girls. The agency began as part of the Catholic Church but is now an independent 501(c)3 organization. You supervise staff who provide academic enrichment, life skills training, career preparation, and recreational opportunities to more than 400 mostly low-income teens annually. Your staff has recently become concerned about rising rates of teenage sexual activity among your participants—several girls have become pregnant, and many more talk openly about unsafe sexual practices. A group of girls who are clients at the organization have approached staff about starting a sex education program, as they have little available sex education that is culturally appropriate. Working with the group, two of your counselors develop a plan to create a new coalition committed to comprehensive sex education and teen pregnancy prevention. They have outlined several goals, including increased funding for such programs and additional resources for provision of contraceptives in this community, which faces a shortage of health care providers. They have also identified several potential members, including a local health clinic, a church, the youth representatives of your programs, and two local high schools. After discussing their strategy and ensuring that they can take on coalition-building tasks in addition to their regular duties, you encourage them to proceed. The following week, you receive an irate call from your Board Chair, who has served on the Board since the organization’s founding and is enraged at a 'rumor’ that you have given your blessing to the organization’s participation in a coalition to ‘hand out condoms to our girls.’ He vows that, if you do not stop your staff from engaging in such activity, he will call for your dismissal. How should you respond? What competing obligations do you face as an employee and a supervisor? What values should guide your decisions? How could you have anticipated and possibly avoided this situation? What guidance does the NASW Code of Ethics give?
Q: Are you solely responsible for addressing the problem? [[Yes]] or [[No]][Ethical Dilemma] The matter is raised with constituency group members or others directly affected by or responsible for the decision. You may participate in discussions or debates on the issue, but you are not solely responsible for the decision.
Game over (For the assignment you will need to find another dilemma that you would be solely responsible for) [[]]You will need to confront the ethical dilemma in question and identify the values, principles, standards associated with the ethical dilemma
Value 1 [[Service]] Value 1: Service
Ethical Principle: Social workers’ primary goal is to help people in need
and to address social problems
Social workers elevate service to others above self-interest. Social workers draw on their knowledge, values, and skills to help people in need and to address social problems. Social workers are encouraged to volunteer some portion of their professional skills with no expectation of significant financial return (pro bono service).
Do you feel you as the organizer of this project that you should continue to proceed? Explore value 2: Social Justice [[yes->social justice]] [[no]]If you do not feel the service value applies here move onto another value
[[social justice]]Value: Social Justice
Ethical Principle: Social workers challenge social injustice.
Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.
Do you feel you as the organizer of this project that you should continue to proceed? [[yes->Ethical Standards]] [[no->no]]Ethical Standards are separate from values and principles.These standards concern (1) social workers’ ethical responsibilities to clients, (2) social workers’ ethical responsibilities to colleagues, (3) social workers’ ethical responsibilities in practice settings, (4) social workers’ ethical responsibilities as professionals, (5) social workers’ ethical responsibilities to the social work profession, and (6) social workers’ ethical responsibilities to the broader society. Some of the standards that follow are enforceable guidelines for professional conduct, and some are aspirational. The extent to which each standard is enforceable is a matter of professional judgment to be exercised by those responsible for reviewing alleged violations of ethical standards.
Identify a few ethical standards that you will need to consider when making a decision about whether or and how to move forward with implementing sex education into a Catholic organizaiton.
[[Ethical Responsibility]]1. SOCIAL WORKERS’ ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES TO CLIENTS
1.01 Commitment to Clients
Social workers’ primary responsibility is to promote the well-being of clients. In general, clients’ interests are primary. However, social workers’ responsibility to the larger society or specific legal obligations may, on limited occasions, supersede the loyalty owed clients, and clients should be so advised. (Examples include when a social worker is required by law to report that a client has abused a child or has threatened to harm self or others.)
1.02 Self-Determination
Social workers respect and promote the right of clients to self-determination and assist clients in their efforts to identify and clarify their goals. Social workers may limit clients’ right to self-determination when, in the social workers’ professional judgment, clients’ actions or potential actions pose a serious, foreseeable, and imminent risk to themselves or others.
For you paper you will then need to make the argument for why or why this does not pertain to your project and what decision you make based on the standard.
Standard 2 [[Ethical Responsibility to Broader Society]] 6. SOCIAL WORKERS’ ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE BROADER SOCIETY
6.01 Social Welfare
Social workers should promote the general welfare of society, from local to global levels, and the development of people, their communities, and their environments. Social workers should advocate for living conditions conducive to the fulfillment of basic human needs and should promote social, economic, political, and cultural values and institutions that are compatible with the realization of social justice.
6.02 Public Participation
Social workers should facilitate informed participation by the public in shaping social policies and institutions
In your paper will you need to explore your chosen standards and make an argument that explains why you are looking at the standard and how it supports or does not support your choice.
You will then move on to identifying any potential [[conflicts of interest]]. How can you work with a group when you are a member of that group? Boundaries will be crossed. Relationships may be effected. What Ethical Standards are in place here? To maintain ethical standards is it okay for you to continue to organize an effort within your identified community?
Pursuing sex education at this organization could cause conflict with the community, your colleagues, your bosses, the catholic diocese. This could impact your employment. Is it worth it? [[yes->list of ethical rules]] [[no->list of ethical rules]]Whether you chose yes or no about it being worth it it is important to finish out the inquiry. Your staff is counting on you and you will need to back up your decision.
Develop a list of "ethical rules" to follow in making the decision. The rules in the list are rank ordered in terms of importance. The consequences of applying the framework are determined.
Think about all of the options available and develop an [[alternative list]]Alternative lists of ethical rules are examined as well as their potential consequences. Consider the different ways you could rank your rules. Can you look at it from another perspective? Could any of the rules be more important than another? What would happen to your decision making if you did rank them differently? Keep in mind that other people will be arguing against your decision you will want to have a strong well thought out plan.
Once you have a strategy and have looked at all of the angles you will then [[take it to your supervisor]] and peersYou will then present all of your findings and ethically based information to your supervisors, mentors, and/or peers. After consultation with them [[...]]DECISION IS MADE!!!!
Congratulations. Even when it is your decision to make you will rarely be left alone to make the decision without any consultation. Where ethical decision making can be tricky and often gray territory where there isn't a clear "right" or "wrong" community organzing can be even more tricky. Relationships overlapp, funding and jobs can be at stake. It is important to consider all of the options and be able to back up your decisions and arguments with solid findings. Getting to know the Social Work Code of Ethics and utilizing it will be good base at either the micro or macro level.
As you move through this assignment please let me know what questions and/or concerns you have.