Child Safety Officer Code of Ethics - Essay Example

?A child safety officer who has been trained as a social worker has to follow a of ethics which is essential for his day to day work and withoutwhose guidance it would be difficult for him to conduct his duties to a satisfactory level. The code of ethics that is followed is a document crafted by the social workers of Australia to act as a guide as well as a means of assisting them to achieve their professional goals and while this may be helpful for a child officer who has received social work training, it may also be a source of conflict when conducting his work. This document works towards identifying the core values and ethics whose purpose is to ensure that there is proper guidance for the social workers in this country to function in an ethical and accountable manner. In this document, there are three core values which function as the foundation upon which all the other functions of the social workers are based and these serve as a general guideline for them when conducting the major responsibilities which have been placed on their shoulders (Tomlinson, 2006). The first of these values is that all the social workers have to ensure that they have respect for all the individuals with whom they come into contact because they have to assume a neutral stance when dealing with the general public. The child officer has to have the realisation that each and every human being is not only of importance but also only one of its kinds and that all the people that the social workers deal with have a right toself-determination and to have their well-being protected. The second core value of the social workers of Australia is that they have the duty of ensuring the promotion of fairness and social justice in the societies within which they work and that have to make special provisions for those people who have been marginalised by the mainstream society. The child officer has the duty of encouraging and being advocates for societal change and by doing so, they will be able to eliminate the oppression of the marginalised in society since it is the latter that tend to be mostly vulnerable. The third, and final, core value is that these social workers have the responsibility of displaying integrity in their profession (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2010). This requires that the child officer displays such values as truthfulness, precision, dependability, empathy, sensitivity, competence and dedication. The development of this core value by any child officer is aimed at helping him display professional conduct, so that he can be able to act with dignity and commitment not only for their own development as professionals but also for the development of their own communities for the better. A child safety officer tends to have many responsibilities especially towards those children who are within what can be considered to be their jurisdiction and the fulfilment of these duties may at times prove to be difficult. Child officers have to perform their tasks in the most professional way that they can so that they can achieve efficiency in their work. When dealing with children, they have to provide counselling and any means of support that they can when these children are going through a crisis that may have come about because of such instances as death, an illness, or when there has been a breakdown in the relationship of their parents (Hewitt, 2010).It is the responsibility of a child safety officer to ensure that the members of society are aware of the services that can assist them when dealing with their children or when they observe that a child is undergoing a problem which may need intervention (Zmora, 2012). When dealing with their clients, child safety officers have been mandated with the responsibility of ensuring that they have provided letters of referral or reports that will help these clients obtain services such as crisis accommodation or social security benefits that are open to them (Barker &Hodes, 2007). One of the means through which a child protection officer can be able to gain success when dealing with problems that affect a number of children is through his getting them into small groups and guiding them in sharing their experiences, and this is likely to enable these children to support each other and to learn the social skills that will help them function positively in the society (Politics & Government Week, 2012). Among the most fundamental duties that have been assigned to child safety officers in Australia is ensuring that they assist community groups to plan and carry out programs to help their children, especially those newly arrived immigrants, to adjust themselves into Australian society which is essential for their eventual integration (Cameron, Frydenberg& Jackson, 2011). It is essential for the child officer to ensure that he or she conducts research on those community problems which might, both directly, or indirectly, affect children and attempt to come up with solutions for them through contacting their clients as well as looking at the records of welfare and healthcare agencies. It is a requirement by the laws of Australia for child officers to be vigilant in ensuring that all the children in the country are safe from abuse, neglect and harm within their homes.This is the reason why when the children security department gets any information concerning any harm or risk to a child of any age; it acts on such information as swiftly as possible to ensure the safety of the child involved (Harrisonet al, 2010). If, for example, an officer believes that a child may need protection, then he has to conduct a thorough investigation and evaluation to ascertain the continued safety of this child. While this is the duty of the children’s department to ensure that children are kept from harm, it is also the responsibility of anyone in the public to ensure that he or she contacts the department if there is concern about any children they believe to have been or is at risk of being harmed (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2013). While this is the case, the child officer has to be ethical in his conduct by ensuring that he does not disclose the identity of the person who provided information concerning the child or children in question. This ensures that the child officer has the ability and discretion needed when conduction his investigations and if he find that the information that he has received is credible, then he can be able to take the necessary action to ensure that the welfare of the child is protected from harm. There are times when child safety officers, during the cause of their investigations, have to visit the homes of those children whose cases are being investigated. It is the responsibility of these officers to show their identity and declare the reason why they are visiting. In certain circumstances, especially where it is suspected that there might be some resistance, these officers may have to work with the police to ensure that they their priorities, which is to guarantee the safety of the children involved (Tilbury, Osmond, Wilson & Clark, 2007). One if the conflicts which child officers who have been trained as social workers, tend to face is how to deal with the situations which solely concern children. It tends to be extremely difficult for a child officer to separate their concern for the rest of the society and concentrate only in dealing with those on children and this is where internal conflict may arise within them. In addition, when dealing with children who are of Aboriginal descent, the child officer has to handle the matter with care and this means that it may be necessary for the child officer to work with a Recognised Entity to ensure that these marginalized people do not feel any more marginalized than they are already (Potito, Day, Carson & O'Leary, 2009). The necessity of going through such channels may take a long time to such an extent that it may be difficult to effectively deal with the problems of such children; the officer does not have as much freedom of action that his training as a social worker would normally provide. The officer has to be sensitive to the concerns expressed by the individuals whose home he is visiting and must clearly state why he is visiting so that he can be more conclusive in his assessment (Lonne, Parton, Thomson & Harries, 2008) and this is despite the fact that in some homes, there might be obvious evidence that a child is being abused. The child officer has to make the individual being interviewed that he or she has the right to either talk to him one on one or to have a legal representative for support. Finally, the child officer has the responsibility of talking to all the children in the home concerning the issues which have brought him to their home, and this might be difficult because the children might refuse to talk directly to the officer for fear of their abusive parents or guardians, who might be present. The child officer has to appreciate the diverse cultural backgrounds of the Australian people because this appreciation plays significant role in the formation of the bonds of work and friendship that make their efforts in the protection of the children in the society a success. Among the benefits which a child officer is able to reap from being appreciative of the diverse cultures in the society is that he will develop the confidence in his ability to do all the tasks that are his responsibility and this will also encourage him to go the extra mile to ensure that he does his best when conducting his duties (Gillingham, 2006). In addition, when working with people from such diverse backgrounds as the Aborigines, he will be able to perform his duties in the best possible way that he knows how and his conduct will be that which promotes the noble principles and practices that are espoused by the Child Safety Department. The new confidence in the child safety officer will enable him to think of a greater role for himself in taking care of the interests of the children within the society and through working with people of diverse backgrounds, he will be able to attain the skills which are necessary for dealing with prospective issues that may arise in the society or community. This is perhaps the only way through which a child officer can hope to be successful in the community which he is working and it may help in helping the community develop any interest in ensuring that the welfare of its children is protected. References Australian Association of Social Workers, 2010, Code of Ethics. Canberra, A.C.T: Australian Association of Social Workers, 1-55. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2013, Child protection Australia 2011-12. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, p. 1-159. Barker, J., &Hodes, D. T, 2007, The Child In Mind: A Child Protection Handbook, 3rd Edition. London: Routledge. Cameron, G., Frydenberg, E. & Jackson, A. 2011, "Young Refugees in Australia: Perspectives From Policy, Practice and Research", Children Australia, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 46-55. Gillingham, P. 2006. "Risk Assessment in Child Protection: Problem Rather than Solution?." Australian Social Work, 59, no. 1: 86-98.  Harrison, L.J., Ungerer, J., Smith, G.J., Zubrick, S.R., Wise, S., Press, F. &Waniganayake, M. 2010, Child Care and Early Education in Australia - the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, Rochester. Hewitt, B. 2010, Marriage Breakdown in Australia: Social Correlates, Gender and Initiator Status, Rochester. Lonne, B., Parton, N., Thomson, J., & Harries, M, 2008, Reforming Child Protection. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, London, UK. "Social Work; Findings from Deakin University in Social Work Reported", 2012, Politics & Government Week, , pp. 3169. Tilbury, C, Osmond, J, Wilson,S& Clark, J. 2007, Good practice in child protection. Frenchs Forest, N.S.W: Pearson Education Australia. Tomlinson, J. 2006, "Social Policy in Australia: Understanding for Action", Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 375-376. Potito, C, Day, A, Carson, E, & O'Leary, P. 2009, 'Domestic Violence and Child Protection: Partnerships and Collaboration', Australian Social Work, 62, 3,369-387. Zmora, N. 2012, "Miss Cutler & the case of the resurrected horse: social work and the story of poverty in America, Australia, and Britain", Choice, vol. 49, no. 11, pp. 2120-2121. Read More