The Helping Process, Personal Values, and Ethical Dilemmas
In this week's content, you explore the helping process and consider this process within the context of social work values and ethics. After completing the resources in this week's What You Need to Know, here are some ideas to get you started in the discussion:
- Social workers can unintentionally develop patterns that are counterproductive at best, or even unethical. Think about ethical or boundary violations, such as being over-involved with a client or negative practitioner reactions toward a client. How might you know if these are occurring? How might you avoid developing these patterns?
- Think about your own personal values and share some of your thoughts about the following questions:
- What are a few of your personal values?
- When do you think you developed these personal values?
- Why do you think you developed them?
- How do you think these values have influenced your personal life?
- What are some strengths and limitations of these values?
- Share a video, podcast, journal article, or other media that relates to an ethical dilemma in social work. What is the specific dilemma? Using the ethical decision-making model recommended in your text, describe how you might work through the dilemma and the decision you would reach.
- What about this week's content did you find to be of most interest or most applicable to social work practice, to your personal or professional life, and/or in your academic journey?
Response Guidelines
- Your Writing: Each post should be courteous, succinct, professional, well written and organized, using proper writing mechanics, grammar, and punctuation.
- Your Post: Post something to the discussion board related to the content covered this week. Do not create your post as a reply to the pinned post.
- Responding to Peers: Respond to the posts of at least two of your fellow learners and continue the conversation. Some ways you could do that include sharing why you agree or disagree with their post, how their thoughts relate to your personal experience or work experience, or how they helped answer a question you had.