SOCIAL WORK: A VALUES-BASED

PROFESSION
Values
Now that you have a better idea of what social workers do in their field, lets
take a closer look at the professions ideological foundation. The profession of
social work is based upon a set of core values. These values are service, social
justice, the dignity and worth of the person, the importance of human relationships,
integrity, and competence.26 In terms of service, the primary goal of social
work is to help people in need and to address social problems. This is the reason
that many people choose to become social workers. Social workers believethat service to others is more
important than self-interest, the dominant value of
the market economy. A second core value is social justice. Much of what social
workers do involves social and economic justice. Social workers promote social
change with and on behalf of vulnerable populationsgroups such as women,
racial and ethnic minorities, children, and people with disabilities. To accomplish
this, social workers strive to develop more just policies, programs, and
services for these groups in need. (Note: By racial and ethnic minorities, we
mean groups that, based on their race or ethnicity, are rendered subordinate to
societys more dominant groups. More information on this topic will be
provided in Chapter 5.)
They also emphasize human rights such as freedom, privacy, safety, education,
health care, and decent standards of living. The aforementioned groups
often suffer from social problems, including poverty, discrimination, unemployment,
and oppression. Often these are groups that are either too young or
too old to participate in the market or, because of race or gender, have been
discriminated against in their efforts to participate in the market economy.
Social workers, therefore, work to promote more just and humane policies as
well as programs to address these issues.
Another core value in social work is the dignity and worth of each person.
All social workers must respect the inherent dignity and worth of every
individual. This is a prerequisite for developing effective helping relationships
with individuals, families, and groups. In the process, social workers need to
understand the unique cultures and backgrounds of the people with whom
they work. This requires an openness and sensitivity to the unique experiences
of every individual. It also involves the promotion of self determination for
each individual.
A fourth core value of social work is the importance of human relationships.
One reason for this is that social workers use human relationships to
promote change in individuals, families, groups, and communities. Social
workers also understand that helping people to develop healthy human relationships
is a means to a high-quality life and happiness for all people. Healthy
human relationships are a prerequisite for meeting the needs of love and
belonging and for developing healthy families.
Integrity is a fifth basic value in social work. Professional social workers
must act with integrity at all times. In so doing, social workers develop the trust
of clients and coworkers. Social workers also work to promote ethical policies
and practices in the organizations in which they are employed. Furthermore,
integrity is an important factor for social workers if they are to have the credibility
needed to promote social justice.
A final core value of the social work profession is competence. Social workers
must practice within the areas of their competence and must continually
work to develop and enhance their professional expertise. What is more, social
workers should look for opportunities to contribute to the professions knowledge
base through education, scientific inquiry, and evaluation of programs and
their individual practice.
Ethics
Values relate to what people consider desirable, while ethics relates more
directly to what people consider right or wrong.27 That is, ethics pertain to
values in action. When considering the profession of social work, ethics are
important because they relate to expectations associated with professionalthat service to others is more
important than self-interest, the dominant value of
the market economy. A second core value is social justice. Much of what social
workers do involves social and economic justice. Social workers promote social
change with and on behalf of vulnerable populationsgroups such as women,
racial and ethnic minorities, children, and people with disabilities. To accomplish
this, social workers strive to develop more just policies, programs, and
services for these groups in need. (Note: By racial and ethnic minorities, we
mean groups that, based on their race or ethnicity, are rendered subordinate to
societys more dominant groups. More information on this topic will be
provided in Chapter 5.)
They also emphasize human rights such as freedom, privacy, safety, education,
health care, and decent standards of living. The aforementioned groups
often suffer from social problems, including poverty, discrimination, unemployment,
and oppression. Often these are groups that are either too young or
too old to participate in the market or, because of race or gender, have been
discriminated against in their efforts to participate in the market economy.
Social workers, therefore, work to promote more just and humane policies as
well as programs to address these issues.
Another core value in social work is the dignity and worth of each person.
All social workers must respect the inherent dignity and worth of every
individual. This is a prerequisite for developing effective helping relationships
with individuals, families, and groups. In the process, social workers need to
understand the unique cultures and backgrounds of the people with whom
they work. This requires an openness and sensitivity to the unique experiences
of every individual. It also involves the promotion of self determination for
each individual.
A fourth core value of social work is the importance of human relationships.
One reason for this is that social workers use human relationships to
promote change in individuals, families, groups, and communities. Social
workers also understand that helping people to develop healthy human relationships
is a means to a high-quality life and happiness for all people. Healthy
human relationships are a prerequisite for meeting the needs of love and
belonging and for developing healthy families.
Integrity is a fifth basic value in social work. Professional social workers
must act with integrity at all times. In so doing, social workers develop the trust
of clients and coworkers. Social workers also work to promote ethical policies
and practices in the organizations in which they are employed. Furthermore,
integrity is an important factor for social workers if they are to have the credibility
needed to promote social justice.
A final core value of the social work profession is competence. Social workers
must practice within the areas of their competence and must continually
work to develop and enhance their professional expertise. What is more, social
workers should look for opportunities to contribute to the professions knowledge
base through education, scientific inquiry, and evaluation of programs and
their individual practice.
Ethics
Values relate to what people consider desirable, while ethics relates more
directly to what people consider right or wrong.27 That is, ethics pertain to
values in action. When considering the profession of social work, ethics are
important because they relate to expectations associated with professionalconduct. Ethics are so
important in social work that the profession has a code
of ethics. This code of ethics spells out social workers ethical responsibilities
to clients, to colleagues, to the social work profession, and to society at large,
among other things. They are, in essence, guidelines for professional conduct.
Ethics become a challenge for social workers when the professional social worker
has a choice between two options, both seemingly ethical, but only one can
be chosen. In such a case, which course of action is more ethical and how does
one determine this? In other cases, a social worker may have ethical responsibilities
to two different parties, say a parent and child, but can only meet his or
her responsibility to one party at a time.28
Social workers also confront ethical dilemmas involving confidentiality.
They are not supposed to share certain personal information conveyed to
them by clients; however, some circumstances may require social workers to
do just that in order to protect other people from harm or to protect clients
from harming themselves. Examples include suicidal clients and violent
spouses.
Other ethical dilemmas faced by social workers involve paternalism. Social
workers believe in self-determination for clients; however, there are certain
circumstances in which social workers may ethically have to direct client
behavior in order to keep a client safe. An example would be a mentally ill
homeless person who desires to sleep outside during a New England winter
instead of using a nearby community shelter. Another illustration would be a
social worker who works with children and youth, a population that is not fully
mature and therefore does not always exercise mature judgment involving
decisions on issues such as sexual relations, alcohol use, and other risk-taking
behavior.
Social workers in policy and administrative jobs deal with ethical dilemmas
that concern the allocation of scarce resources. How do social workers
make ethical choices to fund one program instead of another program? In an
environment of scarce resources, social administrators and policymakers must
make these decisions frequently. Again, the question is, what is the most ethical
option when choosing among several good options?
Furthermore, social workers must make ethical decisions involving their
professional colleagues. When should a social worker report a colleague who
divulges personal client information to others? At what point should a professional
social worker report a colleague who makes a sexual comment? When
should a social worker report a colleague suspected of drug abuse?
Social workers face these and other ethical dilemmas all too frequently. It is
the task of professional social work education to assist students in acquiring
specific knowledge about social work values and ethics and applying these
values and ethics in the field. This includes an awareness of the students
personal values and how they may conflict with the values of the social work
profession. It also requires teachers to stimulate awareness of ethical issues on
the part of students and help them develop analytical skills to deal with these
issues. What is more, by the time students graduate with a social work degree,
they should have a sense of moral obligation and personal responsibility concerning
the values and ethics of the profession.29
As previously stated, the NASW Code of Ethics provides social work students
and professionals with values, principles, and standards to guide their professional
conduct. Specifically, the NASW Code of Ethics serves six purposes.
First, it identifies the core values of the profession. Second, the code summarizes
the broad ethical principles related to social work values and provides ethical
16 Chapter 1
standards to guide social work practice. Third, the code offers social workers a
set of considerations for use in ethical dilemmas. Fourth, it provides ethical standards
by which the general public can hold the profession of social work
accountable. A fifth purpose, particularly important for students, is that the code
helps to socialize practitioners who are new to the field in terms of the professions
mission, values, ethical principles, and ethical standards. And finally,
the code of ethics provides the profession with criteria for judging whether or not
practicing social workers have been unethical in their conduct.30
More specifically, the aforementioned values and associated ethical principles
provided by the NASW Code of Ethics to guide social work practice are
quoted as follows:31
Value: 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).
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.
Value: Dignity and Worth of the Person
Ethical Principle: Social workers respect the inherent dignity and worth
of the person.
Social workers treat each person in a caring and respectful fashion,
mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity.
Social workers promote clients socially responsible self-determination.
Social workers seek to enhance clients capacity and opportunity to
change and to address their own needs. Social workers are cognizant of
their dual responsibility to clients and to the broader society. They seek
to resolve conflicts between clients interests and the broader societys
interests in a socially responsible manner consistent with the values,
ethical principles, and ethical standards of the profession.
Value: Importance of Human Relationships
Ethical Principle: Social workers recognize the central importance of
human relationships.
Social workers understand that relationships between and among
people are an important vehicle for change. Social workers engage people
as partners in the helping process. Social workers seek to strengthen
relationships among people in a purposeful effort to promote, restore,
Social Work as a Profession 17
We can realistically
envision a world without
extreme poverty by the
year 2025 . . .
Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2005, 347.
maintain, and enhance the well-being of individuals, families, social
groups, organizations, and communities.
Value: Integrity
Ethical Principle: Social workers behave in a trustworthy manner.
Social workers are continually aware of the professions mission,
values, ethical principles, and ethical standards and practice in a manner
consistent with them. Social workers act honestly and responsibly
and promote ethical practices on the part of the organizations with
which they are affiliated.
Value: Competence
Ethical Principle: Social workers practice within their areas of competence
and develop and enhance their professional expertise.
Social workers continually strive to increase their professional
knowledge and skills and to apply them in practice. Social workers
should aspire to contribute to the knowledge base of the profession.
Given these values and ethics, social workers feel that it is important to consistently
improve their competence in working with people from various backgrounds and
experiences. This involves a special competence in relation to diversity and individual
dignity.
Competence in Relation to Diversity
and Individual Dignity
Social work programs must be culturally relevant to be effective in assisting
all individuals and groups. That is, social work must recognize the interrelationship
between culture and personal identity. Cultural diversity in social
work often involves people of color, yet this concept also relates to gender,
class, physical ability, and sexual orientation. Using a strengths perspective
(to be discussed in Chapter 2 in more detail), social workers strive to recognize
and utilize the strengths inherent in each group to facilitate positivechange. That said, social workers
need to be careful not to stereotype
individuals based upon membership in a specific group, but instead, recognize
that diversity exists within diversity. Each individual is unique; each is
worthy of dignity.33
Culturally competent practice focuses on the intersection between the
diverse worldview of the individual or group and the dominant views of a
given society; it requires social workers to understand how oppression and
discrimination contribute to a set of values, roles, adaptations, and coping
behaviors on the part of diverse individuals. This is because individuals
from diverse groups often attain a set of values that include survival, combat,
and street values that are quite different from the values that ordinarily
would characterize a diverse social group free of oppression and discrimination.
In short, social workers must develop a comprehensive understanding
of clients, an understanding that includes their diverse background and
associated characteristicsin contrast to using preconceived notions based
upon demographic categories.34
Cultural diversity, by definition, includes social, racial, and ethnic diversity.
Social diversity refers to differences based on age, class, or sexual orientation
for example. The concept of race relates more to physiological
differences. Because racial differences such as skin color are relatively noticeable,
discrimination against individuals based on racial group membership is
common and historically persistent. In contrast to race, ethnicity refers to distinct
population groups that share common traits and customs. These customs
are distinct in terms of their underlying values and the way these values are
conveyed in language, traditions, child rearing, malefemale relations, art,
music, and so on.35
The concept of cultural pluralism seeks to respect and maintain ethnic
differences. Cultural pluralism allows diverse groups to express themselves without
suffering discrimination or oppressioneven when theyre a minority in a
dominant culture. Respect for cultural pluralism demands that social workers
avoid imposing their own culture on people they are trying to assist.36 Social
workers who understand cultural pluralism understand that every individual is
like no other human being. That is, individuals are unique. Yet every individual
is like some other individuals in that they belong to subgroups, whether male or
female, or any other differentiator. And every individual is like all other individuals
in terms of their basic human needs. We all need food, water, shelter, and
relationships. Social workers must be knowledgeable about all three levels of
diversity. Why? Because a knowledge of cultural diversity is the first step in
respecting the dignity of every individual and a key to building trust in a helping
relationship.
To respect cultural pluralism, social workers must develop cultural competency
in their practice. Cultural competency may be understood through a
five-dimensional framework.37 This framework consists of informational,
intellectual, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and interventional competencies.
With regard to informational competence, social workers must become
aware of traditional and nontraditional knowledge in relation to oppressed
and stigmatized populations. This knowledge would include information
about theory, treatment, rehabilitation, empowerment, and community services.
Intellectual competence requires social workers to adapt information
in a way that best assists clients. This often requires or involves creative ways
of thinking, particularly for social workers involved in difficult individual
and social problems.
Social Work as a Profession 19
Intrapersonal competence involves empathy. That is, intrapersonal competence
requires social workers to not only understand their own perspective,
but also to understand another persons view of the world. In doing so, social
workers need to understand, anticipate, and effectively deal with their own
emotional and behavioral reactions to individual problems in relation to a distinctly
different culture. This often requires that social workers monitor their
own culturally learned behaviors in order to effectively help persons from other
cultures.
Interpersonal competence includes the ability to work with people
distinctly different from oneself. It involves communicating with and effectively
engaging clients from different backgrounds. It involves empathy,
warmth, and respect for clients even if one finds the client unappealing or
frightening. Interventional competency refers to the synthesis and culmination
by social workers of the first four competencies. To the extent that
the social worker is competent in obtaining information about the client,
applying information to strategies for helping the client, being able to
understand and control his or her own cultural beliefs and behaviors in relation
to a different culture, and work effectively on a personal basis with
another person, then one can say that a social worker has achieved interventional
competence.38
In developing interventional competence, social workers expect to find
strengths and capabilities in clients even while helping a client to address a
specific problem. In short, social workers must understand the influence of culture
as a factor in problem definition and resolution. This involves the social
workers ability to view a client and their problems through the cultural lens of
the client as well as that of a social worker. It involves an ability to feel comfortable
with differences. It involves an ability to keep an open mind and examine
presuppositions when viewing people of different cultures. It may also involve
the ability to change ones own perspective in the face of new information about
human differences. Overall, it requires an ability to be flexible in thinking and
behavior.39
Social workers believe that cultural competence enables them to better promote
social justice and human rights in their work. Because social justice is discussed
at length later in this text, we briefly describe its importance to social
work next.
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social work education programs examine the many factors that contribute to
oppression and discrimination against certain populations, including racial and
ethnic minorities, children, older adults, and women. People in these groupsare more likely to suffer
from poverty and related problems such as substance
abuse and mental illness. Social work education examines strategies for producing
laws, institutions, and services that better meet the needs of these
populations, and therefore are more socially and economically just. In so doing,
the concepts of distributive justice, human rights, civil rights, and global
oppression are typically examined.41
Social work educators, students, and practitioners believe that these topics
are important. They also believe that finding peoples strengths and empowering
them through those strengths are also important in their work as social
workers.
Strengths and Empowerment
Social workers, as previously stated, believe in empowering their clients,
whether those clients are individuals, families, groups, organizations, or communities.
Each client has strengths that can be used in the helping process.
The social workers job is to collaborate with clients to discover those strengths
and to use them for positive change and empowerment.43
Empowerment is defined as a multidimensional construct that applies to
individuals, families, groups, organizations, and neighborhoods. It involves a
psychological sense of self-control as well as actual influence and power in the
greater society. In this sense, empowerment involves the study of people in
context, a primary distinction of the social work profession.44 Empowerment
refers not only to a state of mind, but also to a reallocation of power that results
from altering social institutions.
Social workers who seek to empower clients see their clients as functional
and healthy when given access to resources and opportunities. For individuals
and families, informal social networks, such as friends and relatives, are important
sources of support in the empowering process. In any case, if empowerment
is to take place, client goals, means, and outcomes must be defined by
the clients themselves in collaboration with a social worker. Social workers
help to provide information to create client self-awareness in setting goals for
positive change; they also help clients to access available resources and use
them effectively.45
In short, social workers empower clients when they increase the clients
ability to control their destinies. This involves an ability to recognize client
strengths and to find, increase, and/or redistribute opportunities and resources
throughout society. For many clients, this is achieved by linking personal and
political power.46