Signature Code of Ethics Made Easy

Esign code of ethics

hi there this is Karen Magruder and in today's video I'm going to talk you through the NASW code of ethics this is something that you'll probably hear about over and over again in your education as well as your practice and of course it's important for social workers to act ethically to follow our own morals as well as you know doing right by our clients our colleagues our employers and just representing the profession well as representatives of social work in addition you'll you'll get this in some of your classes as well as licensing exams so depending on which version of the licensing if you're at bachelor's master's or clinical level licensing exams ethics usually comprises roughly about 20% of that exam depending on the version so it's important to know all of this so diving in I'll give you some background so it was created by the NASW the national association of social workers and all social workers are held to these standards regardless of any astilbe membership that's something I'll hear often is well I'm not in NASW member so do i you know am I still held accountable to the code of ethics and the answer is yes this guides social workers regardless of affiliation with the NASW the very first version of the code of ethics was approved by the NASW delegate assembly back in 1960 and there have been several revisions since then the latest revision at the time of this recording was in August of 2017 the code of ethics is available for free online so you can access it any time using this link here and what the NASW code of ethics is not let is it's not an exhaustive list of scenarios so of course the code cannot cover every possible ethical dilemma or situation that you might run into as a professional social worker rather it gives a list of core values and principles to use really just as guiding principles along with common sense and good judgment the code is organized into four sections the first three are fairly short and the bulk of it is this last section of ethical standards so I'll go through each of these in a little bit more detail first we have the preamble so that provides a summary of the Social work's mission and core values and essentially you know the mission of Social Work is to enhance individual being while understanding the importance of the environment that's one of the things that really separates Social Work from things like psychology is that we look not only at how to improve that will being of the person but also looking at the context of their family you know the systems that they operate the community and do interventions on that level as well so I took this quote from the NASW code of ethics and it says that the primary mission of the Social Work profession is to enhance human wellbeing and help meet the basic human needs of all people with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable oppressed and living in poverty so those are two big buzzwords and social work right vulnerable and oppressed so we we help people in a variety of different settings but that's especially you know our calling is to help people with those types of needs there's six core values for Social Work outlined in the code of ethics and in the preamble they are service social justice the dignity and worth of the person the value of human relationships integrity and competence and in a couple slides I'll go into a bit more detail into each of these because the code then goes on to expand the core values into a set of six ethical principles one based on each value but it also talks about the purpose of the code of ethics there are six purposes outlined in the code one is to help identify what those core values are in social work kind of give us a bit of a identity and knowing what those guiding principles are summarizing those ethical principles and standards helping social workers with ethical decision-making accountability so this is speaking to basically the public holding social workers accountable to a certain standard it also provides training for new social workers and then standards for formal discipline if someone has violated Epix you know with provides a little bit of standards for employers or the the licensing board things like that so here are those six ethical principles based on the six core values that I showed you a moment ago the ethical principle for service is that a social workers primary goal is to help people in need and address social problems we also challenge social injustice respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person so this is really important I mean of course all of these are important right because social workers have that unconditional positive regard often for our clients regardless of if they are rude to us or if maybe they've made some big mistakes in their life one of my field practice placements when I was a student was with the Federal Bureau of Prisons so you can imagine that I worked with individuals who had murdered who had committed bank robberies who had created child pornography and that was a real challenge and lesson in social workers you know really trying to uphold the dignity and worth of all persons the importance of human relationships so this goes a little bit back to the person in the environment so people are not Islands and human relationships impact each of us both positively and negatively integrity of course we need to behave in a trustworthy manner and then competence we need to practice within our areas of competence and then develop and enhance our expertise over time through things like reading the literature and CEUs and things like that so moving on to the ethical standards this is the big part of the code so those few parts that I talked about are important but now we really get into the meat potatoes so it outlines different ethical responsibilities and I'm going to have sections in this PowerPoint slide deck for each of these starting with clients that's the largest section section is looking at our ethical responsibilities to clients it also describes our ethical responsibilities to colleagues in practice settings as professionals to the Social Work profession and to the broader society at large as well so diving in ethical responsibilities to clients first we have a commitment to clients so the well-being of the client is our primary responsibility unless obligations to society or legal requirements supersede this so an example of this would be that social workers are mandated to report child abuse as well as abuse of elders or certain adults that have protections so if they have a significant you know disability or something like that so if our client is coming to us to work through some of his guilts because he's been physically abusing his child you want to help the person through that guilt but that work is superseded by your obligation and your mandate to report that child abuse that's not necessarily in the clients best interest but you still have to do it because it's in the best interest of society and you're required to similarly self-determination so we want to focus on helping the client achieve their goals we're not imposing our own values or direction of what we think the client should do but this is limited if the clients actions or potential actions pose a risk to their self or others and that risk needs to be foreseeable meaning that it could potentially happen in the future serious and imminent so each of these things needs to be met you could foresee it happening it could happen imminently so relatively quickly and it's very very serious and so the classic examples of that are harm to self or others if someone says that they want to kill themselves and they have a plan they have the means they have a very serious intent maybe they've had attempts before that could depending on the situation fall under this category and likewise if someone you know wants to hurt somebody else then we would limit that self-determination as a social worker informed consent is another ethical responsibility to clients you have to have clear and understandable language informed consent and social workers should take steps to ensure that the client can comprehend before they sign off on informed consent they should also have the opportunity to ask questions and if a client doesn't have capacity so perhaps they're too young or they have some cognitive deficits then you can get informed consent from a third party usually the legally authorized representative like a parent or guardian or power of attorney and here are six sorry eight things that you should include informed consent the purpose the risks limits costs alternatives the right to refuse timeframe and use of technology now that's not exhaustive you can certainly have more things and informed consent but those are the components that the code specifically lists as needing to be included in informed consent for treatment and for research as well competence so social workers really just need to represent their services and their credentials based on actual expertise and training if you are interested in learning and new modalities to say you're a private practice therapist and you haven't been trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and want to practice cognitive behavioral therapy first do it on a research and study that modality attends some training or be provided with training consultation and supervision to continue honing your skills and then after all of those you're ready to try that new technique with clients and you may repeat this cycle with other new interventions or things like that cultural awareness and social diversity are very important we recognize that there are strengths in all cultures we want to have as much knowledge as we can of the clients culture and that doesn't mean that we go in there saying yes I know everything about your religion or your you know ethnic background of the country you come from but rather you wanting to have some of that baseline foundational knowledge about different cultural contexts that our clients might be coming from but also having an open mind and curiosity and allowing the client to teach you about what their reality is rather than having you know stereotypes and continue learning about diversity and oppression and what we can do to promote diversity and limit oppression conflicts of interest so we need to inform clients when a real or a potential conflict arises and we need to take responsible steps reasonable steps to resolve that conflict we also want to avoid dual relationships which is basically like if you had a client as someone who was served by your agency but it was also your cousin or it was also you know your friend from church or something like that you want to avoid those dual relationships if there is a risk of exploitation or potential harm to the client so if you live in a big city and you know it's reasonably easy to avoid dual relationships I would say try to avoid dual relationships if at all possible but there may be situations where it's acceptable if there is not a risk of exploitation or potential harm so bottom line if you have a client don't go out of your way to become their friend or anything like that but if a dual relationship is unavoidable for some situational reason it may be okay if there's not a risk of exploitation or harm and if you do provide services to two or more people who have a relationship so this could be like doing couples therapy or seeing two different clients who happen to know each other because they work together or something like that again just be really cautious but the code says that you are the minimum need to clarify the roles and obligations with all parties avoid communication with clients for non service related reasons so as a therapist myself I will include this in my informed consent and explicitly say that you know using email or text communication should really be limited to scheduling appointments and not discussing therapeutic content one that's a boundary thing and wanting to give them the appropriate time and space it's also a HIPAA and privacy and confidentiality issue and likewise with the bullet above I talked about that in my informed consent as well that you know I am thankful when clients want to refer me to someone that they know but usually if it's someone who has a close relationship with an existing client oh I won't accept that referral or I'll send it to somebody else to avoid any kind of conflict of interest and being cautious with your own digital footprint and social media and social networking sites so you never want to engage with clients and social networking sites and you also just want to be cautious of course you know you can have the freedom to do what you want on your own time but just being mindful that if you post you know a certain thing on your social media like indicating affiliation with a political or religious group or some other kind of cause or things like that just being aware that you know if those interests might conflict with the interests of your clients or organizations that could lead to some issues for you okay looking at ethical responsibilities of clients continued we want to respect privacy and confidentiality as much as we possibly but we also should inform clients right up front at the very beginning about any limits to confidentiality here are some common examples of things that I tell clients about where I might have to break their confidentiality if they say that there are harm to themselves either through self-injury or until harming or through suicidal ideation or something else now that doesn't mean that every single time a client even hints at feeling like they don't want to go on that you automatically have to send them to the emergency room and get a welfare check on them however you do need to take some steps in terms of assessing the the risk related to that looking at things like intent means access and things like that and so there may be situations if there's a foreseeable imminent and serious risk to themselves similarly if they talk about wanting to harm somebody else so there's a famous court decision known as Tarasov that was basically a counselor was meeting with a client the client expressed the counselor that he intended to kill his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend and the the client ended up killing the this individual and as a result there was a ruling that mental health professionals have a duty to warn and so that means that if there's imminent and foreseeable risk to somebody else's health or safety that you can warn the police as well as the actual target or individual depending on what state you live in another would be court orders or legals and so I'll talk a little bit later about the difference between a subpoena and a court order there's a little bit of a difference and sometimes you can challenge them but there may be situations where your court mandated to provide information tell their elder abuse and also abuse of other protected adult groups and sometimes supervision so this is definitely true as a student if your provide services obviously you're gonna get supervision and often if it's someone who works at your same agency like your supervisor or even your colleagues on your same team they might be privy to the same information you can discuss that however you can't just talk to you know any social work friend of yours or maybe someone in a different program at your agency that doesn't share the same client it needs to be for the purposes of supervision and there's even pretty strict guidelines about consultation that in certain cases if you're consulting with someone about a case you still need to get their permission to give identifying details so more about privacy and confidentiality we only solicit private information from clients for compelling professional reasons so that means I'm not going to be nosy and snoop and ask my clients about things just to satiate my own curiosity but only if there is a reason that's related to my assessment or treatment of them I only disclose confidential client information with when appropriate and with valid consent so be some of those things outlined above here another really common one would be insurance so if someone is using insurance to get services particularly clinical mental health services you can't just send their records to the insurance you need to make sure that the client you know consents to that discussing confidentiality agreements among a group of clients so that could be if you're doing family work or have like a support group we want there to be as much confidentiality and privacy as possible alone groups but since there's more variables there's more people involved than just the client in the social worker the social worker technically cannot guarantee that all participants in the group will honor that confidentiality and that should be discussed don't talk about confidential client information in public places like in an elevator or a restaurant or something like that where it could be overheard protecting confidentiality in the media in my work as a long-term care Ombudsman there were sometimes media requests and people would want to you know get my my insights into a story or things like that and I can certainly give general information and education but I can't speak to a particular case unless the client consents to that records need to be stored in a secure location that others can't access a good rule of thumb is time if you locked twice so like locked in a room and then also locked in a filing cabinet electronic communication should have safeguards like encryption passwords and firewalls so don't be doing client notes on an open airport Wi-Fi system or something like that and social work should develop policies and procedures for notifying clients of any confidentiality breaches so say your laptop was stolen or your files got broken into what are you gonna do to notify a clients and remedy that situation as much as possible more privacy and confidentiality okay so we want to develop and inform clients about policies related to electronic searches I think things like Google to obtain information about them so in Mike informed consent I make sure to explicitly say look I will not Google you or look you up on social media or do anything like that in order to learn more information about you unless there is a compelling professional reason that it can't be met any other way so example of that would be you know maybe my client calls me and says you know I'm at my friend Steve Jones's house and we're gonna go murder someone maybe I would try to you know figure out where Steve Jones lives or something like that but that's gonna be extremely rare so don't Google your clients just for the fun of it dispose of client records in a way that maintains confidentiality protecting confidentiality of deceased clients so just because a client terminates services or passes away doesn't mean that these protections go away we take steps to protect their confidentiality in the case of the social worker being terminated incapacitated or dying and so you should have a plan in place particularly if you're doing any kind of your own private practice so if you had an agency you know theoretically the plan if any of these things happen was they would hire somebody new right and your supervisor would kind of help that transition but if you're a solo practitioner you need to think about what would happen in that case you know how would you protect the confidentiality of clients files how would you transition those and not abandon clients don't disclose identifying details about clients even for training or education purposes without their consent so as you know I'm a professor and really enjoy incorporating case examples and practice experience to illustrate theory and other examples in my classes but I always either change identifying details like their name and things like that so that they can't be identified or kind of use composite cases or things like that because if I say oh you know I had this client her name was Jane Doe this this and this that's breaking confidentiality even if it's for educational reasons or like supervisory reasons things like that don't disclose identifying details about clients with consultants unless the client has consult consented or there's a compelling need to do so more privacy and confidentiality I promise were almost done so legal proceedings this is a common question I get from students is what happens if I get a subpoena so a subpoena is basically and not the same as a court order so if you get a subpoena and you think that releasing those confidential records or information would be harmful to your client you can respond to the court requesting privilege and depending on what how the court responds you might not have to provide those records now if it would be helpful to you your client and the client wants you to do it and you have consent from the client then by all means you certainly can I've had this happen to me in my work I was a long-term care Ombudsman I had some residents at an assisted living facility who I helped coordinate an emergency evacuation because this abuse at the facility was just so severe and the two employees that were responsible for the abuse were placed on what's called the employee misconduct registry it's a registry that if employers do a background check it would show them that's not being hireable in any contract health service role and they decided to challenge that placement and basically kind of went through court proceedings to challenge their being placed on the employee misconduct registry so then I was contacted by an attorney who subpoenaed my records of the abuse to be able to basically substantiate yes these were perpetrators of abuse they shouldn't be allowed to work with you know verbal individuals in the future so I contacted my clients and you asked them how they wanted me to proceed and they wanted these staff members to be held accountable so I did go ahead and release the records and some of them my state office helped redact some information to protect confidentiality so sort of both but I even actually testified on the stand at the trial about that so you can do that but there may be reasons that you want to avoid that however with a court order that is an order and you have to do it basically or else you're in contempt of court but if that disclosure would be really harmful to your client you can request that the court withdraw the order limit the order or maintain records under seal so even if you have to release records there are some steps you can take to try to minimize damage to your client but making sure that you are cooperating with court orders okay access to records we want to provide clients with reasonable access to their own records if the clients access to their own records would cause serious misunderstanding or harm we want to help clients to interpret records and if there is compelling evidence that access to the records would cause serious harm we limit the clients access to portions of the records or maybe even all the record and this is gonna be pretty rare but if that happens you want to make sure to document both their requests and the reason that you chose not to honor the request okay we've been going for 25 minutes here I wanted to mix it up I'm gonna have some fun pictures and things coming up for the rest of the slides to make sure you're still awake and paying attention so ethical responsibilities to clients there's a whole section on sexual relationships with clients I think a lot of this is common sense but I still want to just go through some of these details we as social workers assume the full burden for setting clear appropriate and culturally sensitive boundaries so under no circumstances can we say oh it's okay that I slept with my client because you know he or she was being seductive and coming on to me it doesn't matter what the client does or doesn't do we need to set those boundaries and be appropriate and professional so under no circumstances whatsoever should there be any kind of sexual relationship with current clients in terms of clients relatives and I personally would say really anybody that the client knows you don't want to have any kind of sexual relationship if there's a risk of exploitation or potential harm to the client in terms of formal clients the code says you should not have a sexual relationship because there's a potential for harm to the client but this is a little bit more of a gray area than current clients the code says that if a social worker claims exception due to extraordinary circumstances I'm not really sure what those extraordinary circumstances would be the social worker has to demonstrate that the former client wasn't and this is intentionally or unintentionally exploited coerced or manipulated so this is really getting into murky waters I personally would say as a rule of thumb just don't do it but this is what the code outlines and then exes you don't want to provide social work surfaces to anybody that you've had a previous sexual relationship with it's a physical contact kind of relating to some of that you don't want to engage in physical contact if there's a possibility of psychological harm as a result and you need to set those clear appropriate and culturally sensitive boundaries so typically something that is minimal and professional like a handshake or something like that would would be okay depending on the cultural context in the context of where your placement where your agency is but anything that could cause harm to the client you of course don't want to do and want to be really cautious about about that sexual harassment and derogatory language obviously don't do it that's a no-brainer payment for services so social workers should not accept goods or services in lieu of monetary payments so that would be like bartering my LCSW supervisor told the story of a client that she worked with as a therapist and her client was a masseuse and the client offered to basically exchange therapy for massages and my supervisor wisely said no that wouldn't be appropriate one because you're not supposed to you know barter services but also that would be a real dual relationship and blurring all kinds of lines if your client is like rubbing you do you not solicit a private fee for services that a client is entitled to for free through your agency and fees should be fair reasonable and commensurate with services performed so a lot of social workers you want to advocate that their agencies you know provide services either for free or a sliding scale basis that is you know fair and reasonable to what the clients are able to afford so for clients who lack decision-making capacity we want to take reasonable steps to safeguard their interests so I've worked with folks who have dementia and I still want to make sure that everything I'm doing is within you know their best interests we want to take reasonable efforts to ensure continuity of services so if you're going on vacation or there's a massive power outage or illness or things like that working with your agency to make sure that there is a plan to minimize those disruptions and interruptions as much as possible and then referral for services so you want to refer to somebody else when another professional specialized knowledge or expertise is needed to better serve the clients or when you believe that you're not being effective or making reasonable progress with that client termination of services you need to take reasonable steps to avoid abandoning clients and arrange for continuity of services so this means if you're leaving an agency making sure to give as much notice as possible you know I'm just gonna up and leave and abandon clients if you are terminating services for any reason needed notify clients as soon as possible and under no circumstances should you terminate services in order to pursue some kind of relationship whether that be social financial or sexual with a client you should terminate though when services are no longer required or no longer serve their needs or interests so in terms of terminating for non-payment that can happen if so if the client is not paying you or your agency you can terminate them and no longer provide services if the contract in terms of payment was made clear as well as the consequences of non-payment and the person doesn't pose a danger to self or others okay so we know that when we're learning it's really important to not just review information be able to recall it and I think it's helpful to have some practical examples and so I've kind of created my own questions based on common questions that I get from students and other professionals about these so I have a few questions here about the ethical responsibilities to clients and then the other part of the lecture will be about all of those other you know to professionals to colleagues to the broader society and we'll have a second quiz there so oops okay you may have gotten a little sneak preview that here is the first question the Code of Ethics provides an exhausted list of ethical dilemmas and step-by-step instructions this is true or false well we know this is false it's basically an overview with guiding principles and some helpful ways of thinking but it isn't going to provide you with every type of situation you can encounter so you need to follow these principles and use your best judgment and supervision social workers may have limited physical contact with clients true or false well that's true of course we want to be appropriate and professional and culturally sensitive and some social workers may choose to not have any physical contact whatsoever that's fine but it doesn't say that you can't at all in the code of ethics regardless of circumstances the well-being and self-determination of a client is always the social workers top priority it's not true or false yeah that's false in most circumstances the well-being and self-determination of a client is our priority but there may be certain situations such as you needing to report abuse or things like that that we might need to circumvent their self-determination and look out for the well-being of somebody else like if they intend to harm someone else which of the following is not a valid reason to break confidentiality and reveal identifying client information without their consent so there's multiple here that are not valid reasons the client self reports committing child or elder abuse there's a serious imminent and foreseeable risk to harming self or others a student seeks guidance from their field supervisor the social worker wants advice from a social worker friend who is employed by a different agency the social worker receives a court order the social worker receives a subpoena and the social worker is conducting a training and gives a case example so which of these are valid reasons for breaking confidentiality and revealing client identifying information and which are not one that's not is the social worker wants advice from a social worker friend employed by a different agency so maybe a classmate that you you know went to school with just because they're licensed social workers doesn't mean they're privy to your clients information and of course this goes for our friends and spouses and things like that another one would be a subpoena this remember I said that the subpoena is not the same as a court order and you may be able to challenge a a subpoena and then finally the social worker is conducting a training and giving a case example you still wouldn't reveal the clients name or other identifying information without their consent the same confidentiality expectations apply for social work with individuals families and groups scepter or false well that's false in terms of the Social Work role we have the same confidentiality expectations but we need to make sure to educate people who are receiving services in a group whether it be a family or like some kind of other group setting like Alcoholics Anonymous or support group or something like that that we cannot guarantee that every member of the group is going to protect confidentiality the same way that the social worker would social workers may deny client requests to view their records is that true or false that's true usually we want to allow clients to have as much access to their records as possible but if there is a compelling and legitimate reason that that would cause serious harm to the client we might be able to not give them the records as long as we document the request and why we chose not to give them access to the records social workers have the right to terminate clients for non-payment is that true or false that is true so first you want to make sure that they're aware of what the payment contract is and what will happen if they don't pay and may they're not a imminent risk to the self or something else and if all those are met then you can certainly terminate someone for non-payment okay looking at Ithaca responsibilities to colleagues so this is the next level up the pyramid and don't worry the clients one was by far the larger one and these ones are a bit shorter and so I'm gonna kind of fly fly through some of these other ones here so respect we don't misrepresent the qualifications views and obligations of colleagues we avoid unwarranted negative criticism and cooperate with them if that's in the clients best interest we protect their confidentiality we work in interdisciplinary collaboration again if that's in the best interest of the clients and making sure that people in an interdisciplinary setting understand our role and ethical mandates and if there's a dispute involving a colleague the code says you should not take advantage of those disputes to advance your own interests and not exploit clients again a lot of this is common sense right if there's a situation where a colleague is impaired so maybe they show up drunk or something like that they're incompetent or they're engaged in some kind of unethical conduct the social worker should really discourage prevent and expose and correct any unethical conduct but this is the order of operations you always first consult directly with the colleague who is impaired incompetent or unethical to help them address the issue and take remedial action if that is not effective then you would pursue channels through the employer the NASW and the licensing board so if there looks like really really extreme examples like your colleague was sexually assaulting clients I mean I would say go to your employer and the licensing board don't just be like hey you should stop assaulting our clients and hope that they do but usually in more minor situations like the a colleague is typically the common examples they're just not very effective you want to work directly with them and help them to address the issue before you take it all the way escalating up to like the licensing board for example okay so ethical responsibilities to colleagues continued we have consultations so if you don't know what to do to help your clients you should seek that if that's in the best interest of your client staying up to date with your colleagues areas of expertise so you know who to go to on certain issues and disclosing as little information as possible so if I want help with figuring out how to address my clients anxiety and maybe she has severe anxiety over public speaking say like maybe like a almost a phobia of public speaking I might talk about in my consultation you know her history of trauma with public speaking or the symptoms for anxiety what we've worked on so far it wouldn't be relevant for me to say oh and by the way she's got the biggest nose I've ever seen right I mean there's no reason for me to mention that and that's kind of a silly example but just because something about the client or their history is interesting it's if it's not relevant you don't share that sexual relationships never never never have a sexual relationship with anyone that's under your professional authority like a supervisee a student or a trainee and you also want to avoid sexual relationships with colleagues if there is a potential for a conflict of interest I personally would say just avoid that but the Code of Ethics again says and then obviously sexual harassment of anybody clients or colleagues you want to avoid that next level here so you can probably see by now I had clients and in purple and then colleagues and I'm into practice settings so we're we're getting through some of this so client records should accurately reflect the nature and extent of services provided and if you're transferring a client to another provider you want to discuss it with the client and make sure that's in their best interest as an administrator you want to advocate for adequate resources for your agency and even the community as well funding for programs like Medicaid and snap things like that don't discriminate or be unfair in funding allocation avoid conflicts between agency policy and the Code of Ethics and provide continuing education and training for staff development in terms of commitment to employers again some of this is sort of common sense we want to follow through on our commitments to our employers whenever possible work to not only just meet minimum expectations but proactively improve their policies procedures efficiency and effectiveness make sure employer understands the social workers ethical obligations so particularly things like mandated reporting and other things like that informed consent you want to make sure your agency is aware of what you have to do and supports that if there's conflicting information say your agency says you have to you know do one thing that the code says you have to do something else the general rule of thumb is that you follow what the code of ethics is prevent and eliminate discrimination don't hire employees or students if the labor practice says that your employer and your agency are unfair of course being a diligent steward of agency resources and then in terms of labor unions and strikes this is something that comes up as a question a lot social workers are allowed to be a part of labor unions as per the code of ethics but they I quoted this because I think they say it well here reasonable differences of opinion exist among social workers concerning their primary obligation or professional obligations during an actual or threatened labor strike so certainly there may be situations where social workers want to organize and act to improve and improve the conditions their place of employment sometimes something like this could be detrimental to clients though and so you need to really balance each of those and use good judgment competence we want to be reviewing the the academic literature and best practices to make sure that we're staying on top of that of course discrimination dishonesty fraud deception misrepresentation don't do it this is my emoji summary of that section of the code of ethics private conduct and impairment you only claim credentials you actually have and correct inaccuracies so for example as a professor you know I'm a professor in practice but I'm a licensed social worker I don't have a PhD and so I'm not a doctor and so if students you know email me and say hi dr. Magruder I should respond and say like I'm not a doctor so it's not only like not lying and saying you have something you don't but if someone like accidentally puts on your bio that you have a degree you don't or something like that you need to also proactively correct any of those inaccuracies so that you're not inadvertently misrepresenting yourself or your credentials not letting your personal life or issues interfere with your professional obligations judgment or performance and certainly life happens right everybody has things that happen personally we're human and so things come up and so if there are ever personal issues that are interfering and whether that be you know a short term I'm just needing them a break some time off or if it's more of a long-term issue you know seeking supervision consultation and appropriate remedial action you know getting help for yourself you know whether that be through mental health professional making adjustments in your workload you know perhaps stepping back or whatever else is needed to best serve the clients you don't want to engage an uninvited solicitation of new services or testimonials from current clients if they are vulnerable to undue influence manipulation or coerce so again this is a little bit more of a gray area you can certainly you know go out and market your services but not if the way that you're approaching marketing your services or business is going to impact someone who's vulnerable to manipulation or coercion acknowledging credit obviously you should do it we all like to be given credit when we've done something and that's the ethical thing to do as well as just a good practice for building relationships as well okay the responsibility to the Social Work profession we're getting close to the end here I've got some more fun memes for you to keep you awake integrity of the profession we uphold promote and advance the social recognition core values and ethics contribute to the knowledge base through research so even you know as a full-time practitioner in the community I've collaborated with some folks at UTA to do some program evaluation and research into the data my agency and publish some peer-reviewed articles based on that knowledge so letting research inform your practice but also practice and forms the research and then act to prevent the unauthorized and unqualified practice of social work so did you know that you actually cannot legally call yourself a social worker in terms of like your resume or your job title if you're not licensed so even if you have about choice of social work our masters of Social Work you aren't a social worker professionally unless you're a licensed social worker ethical responsibilities to the social profession continued evaluation and research and so again it's great to monitor and evaluate our policies programs and interventions to make sure they're effective promoting and facilitating that evaluation research going through IRB is which is institutional review boards a lot of universities will have these and basically you have to go through some additional training on working with human subjects and research ethics and things like that do a proposal and get it approved to do an official study and you want to get voluntary written consent from the participants of that research without undue inducement to participate so you don't want to coerce them with like this amazing financial reward where they feel like they really can't say no you can give incentives but they can't unduly and influence them so what if the client can't consent to research maybe they're a baby or they have dementia or something like that you want to do what you can to provide an appropriate explanation so if it's a young kid you know breaking it down into language that they can maybe understand obtaining a scent whenever possible so the difference between consent and assent is that asset is basically passive and consent is active so if I do this example in my classes sometimes where I'll be talking about this and then without warning I'll just go over and sit on a client's on earth on a student's desk and they're usually not gonna be like get off my desk like they don't shove me off the desk there's kind of like okay what's happening now they have assented to me sitting on their desk and the difference with that is then I would go to the next person I'd get up off the desk walk over someone else and say may I may I sit on your desk for a moment and if they say yes then I said they have consented so the action was the same but in in one place I got explicit consent yes you may do this whereas with assent it's basically just like not saying no and then you can also get written consent from a proxy so maybe that's a power journey or a parent or guardian never do research without consent unless there has been a rigorous and responsible review showing that that research without consent is justified and then equally effective alternative is just not feasible so this is going to be things like naturalistic observations where if you told the people that they were going to be observed they would act differently and it's called the Hawthorne effect so there might be situations like that where you don't get consent beforehand you want to protect participants from unwarranted harm and ensure anonymity and confidentiality of participants and reporting reporting findings accurately okay we're on the homestretch here this is the very last section of the pyramid so finally we have ethical responsibilities to the broader society social welfare public participation this could be things like voting and public emergencies so I was working in the dallas-fort Worth area in doing work with older adults in long-term care when hurricane Harvey came through and a lot of folks from Houston were evacuated to the dallas mega shelter this is a photo from the news and so I spent a couple days providing social work services on a pro bono basis at the delyth mega shelter helping people you know cope with the crisis you're doing some kind of crisis intervention counseling almost and then providing services to older adults so the the shelter was not really set up very well to deal with older adults so providing things like adult depends and eyeglasses and walkers and helping them get prescriptions transferred over or if someone really needed long-term care helping them find an assisted living or nursing facility and so of course you know you might not be able to travel to go help in an emergency but if something happens you know being willing to provide services as much as you can and finally our last slide here whew social and political actions so we have this macro level mandate to a lot of what I've talked about so far has been based on working with individuals families or agencies but we of course work with communities and on the macro level as well and we're actually mandated in our ethical responsibilities to engage in that advocacy and and it doesn't say you know we have to be a part of a certain political or vote you know for a certain candidate it's not that specific by any means but just any kind of social and political action that is aligned with social require values in seeking equality services opportunities meeting basic human needs and advancing social justice you want to be aware of how politics and policies impact practice and then in turn use your practice examples to impact policies and politics act to expand choice for all people and promote conditions that respect cultural and social diversity and inclusion this is fairly broad but basically anything that would be beneficial to clients who are vulnerable you know or oppressed is something that social workers should advocate for on the macro level okay our second quiz time let's make sure we got some of the key concepts here so social workers should never have a dual relationship with a client or supervisee set true or false that's actually false I personally would say it's a good idea not to have a dual relationship with a client or supervisee or a student or whatever but that might not be the case and it's only if it's going to create you know potential for for harm or conflict of interest to that person so for example when I was a student at UTA I was a graduate research assistant and so I worked with several professors you know doing work on research articles and data collection and then I was actually one of their students in a class as well so that would be an example of it do kind of a dual relationship I was I was a supervising / kind of collaborator on a research project and then also a student but it wasn't harmful to me you know there were clear inappropriate boundaries I wasn't given different treatment in the class and so that was remedied and not an issue but overall a good idea to be very very cautious with this particularly with clients if a social worker colleague is incompetent impaired or acting unethically you should first I'll add the caveat if it's not super super major consult directly with the colleague and help them address the issue or pursue discipline or retraining through the employer the NASW or the licensing board so yes a consulting directly with the colleague is what you want to do first and this is something that is asked pretty often on licensing exams so keep that in mind it is considered unethical for social workers to join an organized labor union is that true or false that's false we certainly have the right to be a part of unions and need to exercise good professional judgment about how things like strikes will impact our clients in our profession as a whole social workers may conduct some types of evaluation or research without client consent is that true or false you always need to have client consent well this is true you may be able to do some kinds of evaluation research without getting consent from every individual client an example of that would be naturalistic observations or maybe you're evaluating the efficacy of programs so in my work as an ombudsman for example we collected data on what percentage of our complaints were resolved to the full satisfaction of the resident or complainant now every single person that I worked with all thousands of residents I talked to did I get written consent from them saying hey I write down how well I resolved your complaint and log it in a database and track how well I'm doing No and so there's some types of you know data tracking that you don't need individual consent from the client but most kinds of evaluation or studies do require client consent social workers should not engage in political advocacy as this may be a conflict of interest with their employer you're false this is a big question particularly things like posting on Facebook that you went to you know the women March or different things like that people have questions about what's going on there and I will say that your employer might have some policies about that you know that you can do it ever you want on your own time as long as you're not representing yourself with the agency but overall this is false so we do have an ethical mandate to work on behalf of our clients and advancing social and political action that will be beneficial to them as a whole oh so we're just under an hour here of course I didn't cover absolutely everything that's in the Code of Ethics but this is something that is mentioned so much in classes and the profession that I thought it would just be really helpful whether you're reviewing for a licensing exam or taking this as part of class or just curious about different ethical dilemmas to have some of these resources and practical examples and if you have any questions feel free to let me know thanks and have a great day