Ethical Principles in Social Work - Essay Example

Social Work and Social Control (Concept of Deservingness)

Social work and social control encompass several practices and ethical concerns that purpose to promote successful human relationships and existence within communities. As a career path, social work manipulates theories explaining human behavior and characteristic of social systems to remedy challenges facing individuals, families, and groups as well as empower people to recognize their abilities and skills for survival in social, economic, and political confines of life. In addition to solving individual and communal problems, social work further emphasizes on human rights and social justice to enable people to live fulfilling lives in their communities. Majorly, social work employs social control that observes norms and rules to promote responsible behavior and among individuals in various social settings. Further, social work examines the concept of deservingness by exploring challenges that deserving groups such as the elderly, sick, disabled and unemployed face in their daily lives. Despite majoring on promoting social change and successful human relationships, social work and social control further examine challenges existing in various confines of social life and their possible remedy to achieve successful living and respect for human rights.

Ethical Principles in Social Work

To address social problems appropriately, social work observes ethical principles that cover all aspects of human life. Among the ethical principles acting as a pillar to social work, include respect for persons, social justice, and professional integrity when handling clients with specific social challenges. Firstly, Chenoweth and McAuliffe, (2012) explain that social workers apply respect for persons by observing diversity among individuals, championing for equality and adherence to human rights. Importantly, respect for persons demands that social practitioners deliver humane services geared towards achieving duty care to avoid offending or providing harmful services to their clients. Specifically, respect for persons concerning social work values requires social workers to seek views of their clients before providing appropriate intervention to their problems according to Reamer (2013). For instance, a social worker dealing with emotionally disturbed client is expected to listen to the patient’s narration of the story determine the underlying issues. Of importance to respecting the customers, view is to recognize origin of the of the client’s problems and provide solutions that address both past and present challenges as elaborated by Lundy and Lundy (2011). Further, respect for persons is essential in social work because it allows social workers to comply with the identity and interdependence of their clients to ensure they survive successfully in their communities.

In addition to respect of persons, social work further recognizes social justice as an ethical principle that protects the rights of client and ensures access to various benefits for their personal development. Ife reiterate that social workers uphold social justice by being critical of situations and social systems that foster inequality and forms of injustices in their respective societies (2012). Of importance to social workers regarding social injustice is to civil, political and economic rights conform to socially and culturally obligated practices that characterize an individual and communal existence. According to Hancock, social injustices that social workers address include forms of abuse such as violence against women and sexual offenses that are prevalent in the current communities (2013). Similar to political and economic injustices facing contemporary communities, sexual and physical violence is a major concern that social workers wrestle with in their confines of work to restore sanity to individuals and the community as a whole.

Social workers stationed in health facilities frequently encounter victims of sexual and physical offense abused by close associates or strangers. Gould and Baldwin explain that Social work profession demand that practitioners must assume the healing process by interacting with victims to ensure justice prevails, determine the cause of their predicaments, and devise appropriate intervention strategies (2013). For instance, social work demand that practitioners dealing with physically abused clients need to engage both the victim and the perpetrator to determine factors surrounding the conflict. Despite majoring in social justice to remedy individual and communal problems, human services demand that social workers need to focus on means of uncovering the underlying issues in the relationship to provide a long term solution. The process of engaging the victims not only aim at solving the problem but also exploring causes and challenges facing the victims to in to efficiently solve future problems arising from similar cases as explained by Doel (2016). In addition to remedying individual problems, social work practice further examines communal social challenges to ensure coexistence. Among the societal responsibilities that human services practitioners address include enlightening the public on ways of countering economic, health and political problems to foster successful existence.

Consequently, professional integrity emerges as an essential ethical concern that social workers uphold in their endeavors to ensure social change and individual wellbeing. Among professional values that social workers support include honesty, transparency, competence, duty care, and confidentiality of information shared by the clients. Guttmann professional maintain that integrity requires social workers to use their skills to attend to the patients rather than personal gain (2013). The significant ethical practices that govern human services workers include confidentiality and duty care because they directly respond to client’s emotional and physical well-being. Berg-Weger confidentiality is important because it safeguards the patient’s details and information shared to avoid prejudice concerning challenges facing the victim (2016). For instance, clients with infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and those in troubled marriages trust social workers to conceal their information to prevent them from prejudice and ridicules from individuals who do not mean well to them. Confidentiality prompts clients to trust social employees and open up to discuss secrets share critical information that is essential in remedying their present problems.

Similarly, duty to care is a social work ethical principle geared towards giving clients appropriate care as far as their problems are concerned. Majorly, duty to care requires social workers to observe quality professional care by prioritizing the client’s needs over theirs. Importantly, duty to care ascertains that social workers respond to client’s needs regarding their present conditions to provide long-term solutions. For instance, when dealing with clients facing challenges in their marriage life, duty to care mandates a social worker to visit affected family on a regular basis and spend time with them to recognize their activities and interactions to determine effective ways of helping them resume normalcy in life. Duty to care further involves talking to the family jointly and even assigning them tasks to foster understanding to solve their challenges.

Social Control

Social work operates concurrently with social control that encompasses various means through which human actions, thoughts, and appearance are regulated to achieve coherence and existence in different social settings. Cournoyer explains that social control is maintained through authoritative institutions, laws, social norms, rules, and economic regulations that aim to alleviate deviant behavior and encourage desirable practices among individuals (2016). The known forms of social control include informal social control that concerns with an observation of norms and values prescribed by the society and beliefs propelled by socializations and growth process such as, peers, school system, and family structures. The informal social control is essential for smooth operations of social work because it predetermines rules that individuals observe to prevent an occurrence of conflicts in the society as explained by Birkenmaier, Berg-Weger and Dewees, (2014). For example, societal norms that require female teenagers to dress decently before adults and opposite peers help in remedying cases of irresponsible sexual practices that are prevalent in most societies.

Continually, the formal social control includes regulations installed by governing bodies such as the state, military and various federal agencies that seek to instill responsible behavior among individuals. The common form of social control includes presence of a police officer in a social setting to prevent ill-minded individuals from initiating their wicked plans. Cree (2013) observe that formal social control promotes social work by regulating deviant behaviors and safeguarding social practices human services practitioners assigned to deal with dangerous individuals who are under probation.

The Concept of Deservingness

Needy people have suffered unfair treatment from welfare organizations and individuals who deem them worthless due to their inability to participate in constructive activities in the society and their families. However, social work through the concept of deserving purposes to ensure individuals lead successful lives according to their uniqueness. According to Colby, Dulmus and Sowers (2013), the concept of deservingness classifies the needy in four major categories including the elderly, sick, disabled, and unemployed individuals. According to Van Oorschot the degree of deservingness, classify the old as the most vulnerable among the categories of needy people. The elderly at the optimum level of deservingness due to their low educational achievement, poor economic conditions and unstable social conditions due to lack of family or friends to care for them during their sunset days. The second category of the deserving group includes the sick people perceived to face emotional and financial challenges because of their conditions and rejections from friends and family. In addition, disabled people occupy the third level of deservingness category because social workers health institutions have several means of helping them cope up with their conditions such as counseling and provision of support equipment and services to help them live successfully despite the challenges of their conditions. According to Drolet (2016), unemployed individuals occupy the lowest level of deservingness group because their conditions are remedied with time despite financial problems encountering their lives.

In summation, social work, social control and the concept of deservingness are significant aspects in establishing a change within a community and supporting individuals to achieve success living. Importantly, social work observes various ethical principles that govern how human service workers operate to ensure success along their confines of work. The major ethical principles governing social work include confidentiality and duty to care that clarifies how social practitioners relate and handle their clients to meet success. Further, social control refers to rules, laws, and norms set formally or informally to enable individuals adopt desirable behavior and help social workers to manage issues presented by their clients. Social work also deals with the concept of deservingness that categorizes the needy according to their degree of need to enable social workers to make informed choices and prioritize appropriately when dealing with needy persons.