Standards of Care in Social Work: Ethical and Risk Management Implications.

Social workers are sometimes named as defendants in malpractice lawsuits. These lawsuits allege negligence, specifically that social work defendants owed a duty to the plaintiff, breached this duty, and the defendant's actions caused harm. Plaintiffs in litigation cases typically allege that social workers violated or failed to meet prevailing standards of care in the profession. It is essential that social workers understand the legal concept of standard of care and its implications for professional practice. This article reviews the concept of standard of care; discusses the ways in which social work ethics standards, federal and state laws, national practice standards, expert witness testimony, and professional literature determine the standard of care; and presents practical steps social workers can take to comply with prevailing standards of care, protect clients, and protect themselves. The author focuses especially on complex cases where social workers may not agree on relevant standards of care.

Moral Disengagement in Social Work.

In recent years, social workers have paid increased attention to ethical issues. The profession's literature has burgeoned on topics such as ethical dilemmas in social work practice, ethical decision making, boundary issues and dual relationships, ethics-related risk management, and moral injury. This noteworthy trend builds on social work's rich and long-standing commitment to the development of core values and ethical standards evident throughout its history. Unlike allied human service and behavioral health professions, social work's ethics-related literature has not focused on the critically important issue of moral disengagement. Moral disengagement is typically defined as the process whereby individuals convince themselves that ethical standards do not apply to them. In social work, moral disengagement can lead to ethics violations and practitioner liability, particularly when social workers believe that they are not beholden to widely embraced ethical standards in the profession. The purpose of this article is to explore the nature of moral disengagement in social work, identify possible causes and consequences, and present meaningful strategies designed to prevent and respond to moral disengagement in the profession.

Ethical Practice in a Post-Roe World: A Guide for Social Workers.

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, concluding that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. The court's decision in Dobbs immediately introduced challenging ethical issues for social workers who serve people who become pregnant. Key questions concern social workers' ability to protect clients' privacy and confidentiality, documentation protocols, and client abandonment. In addition, social workers must be concerned about the possibility that they are at risk of being named in licensing board and ethics complaints, lawsuits, and criminal court indictments because of their work with people who seek abortion-related information and services. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the Dobbs decision; discuss compelling ethical issues facing social workers who work with people who seek reproductive health information and services; present guidelines to assist social workers who face ethical dilemmas related to reproductive health services; and highlight the critical importance of ethics-informed social work advocacy related to reproductive health.

Why Care-Based, Not Carceral, Approaches to Suspects With Mental Illness Is Key to Whether We Trust Professional or State Authority Ever Again.

Many police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and parole boards have reformed how their court- or carceral-based work with patients who have mental illness proceeds. This article discusses how policies and protocols have evolved to help court and carceral workers meet mental health needs of people in their custody and considers which virtues and values should guide clinically, ethically, and legally relevant deliberations and conduct.

Muchos funcionarios policiales, fiscales, abogados defensores, jueces y comisiones de libertad condicional han reformado los procedimientos de su trabajo judicial o carcelario con personas que padecen enfermedades mentales. El presente artículo analiza cómo han evolucionado las políticas y los protocolos para que los funcionarios judiciales y penitenciarios atiendan las necesidades en materia de salud mental de las personas a su cargo y considera las virtudes y los valores que deben guiar las deliberaciones y conductas clínica, ética y jurídicamente relevantes.

Evolving standards of care in the age of cybertechnology.

Behavioral health professionals are making increased use of cybertechnology to deliver services to patients, communicate with patients, gather information about patients, and communicate with colleagues. The advent of cybertechnology - included the Internet, text (SMS), email, video, cloud storage of electronic records, and other forms of electronic communication and documentation - has introduced novel and unprecedented ethical and risk-management challenges. This article provides an overview of emerging issues related to informed consent; delivery of services; privacy, confidentiality, and privileged communication; boundary issues and dual relationships; documentation; and practitioners' relationships with colleagues. The author highlights new standards of care that are being incorporated into licensing statutes and regulations; professional codes of ethics; and practice guidelines adopted by the professions of psychiatry, psychology, mental health counseling, marriage and family therapy, and clinical social work.

Ethical Issues in Integrated Health Care: Implications for Social Workers.

Integrated health care has come of age. What began modestly in the 1930s has evolved into a mature model of health care that is quickly becoming the standard of care. Social workers are now employed in a wide range of comprehensive integrated health care organizations. Some of these settings were designed as integrated health care delivery systems from their beginning. Others evolved over time, some incorporating behavioral health into existing primary care centers and others incorporating primary care into existing behavioral health agencies. In all of these contexts, social workers are encountering complex, sometimes unprecedented, ethical challenges. This article identifies and discusses ethical issues facing social workers in integrated health care settings, especially related to informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, boundaries, dual relationships, and conflicts of interest. The author includes practical resources that social workers can use to develop state-of-the-art ethics policies and protocols.

A Narrative on The Witch-Hunt Narrative: The Moral Dimensions.

Ross Cheit's The Witch-Hunt Narrative raises a number of complex moral issues. Cheit's principal purpose is to challenge the belief that our society has overreacted to claims about the sexual abuse of children. Both directly and indirectly, Cheit's in-depth analysis broaches moral concerns pertaining to the integrity of child abuse allegations, investigations, civil litigation, and criminal prosecution, with an emphasis on the mixed motives of the parties involved in key cases. This article provides an overview of ethical questions pertaining to gathering information from very vulnerable individuals, informed consent, institutional review, protection of research participants, the use of deception and coercion, confidentiality and privacy, reporting research results, and conflicts of interest. In addition, the author discusses the phenomenon of whistle-blowing as it pertains to professionals' ethical judgments about disclosure of wrongdoing and misconduct. The author outlines key ethics-related concepts, applies relevant moral theory, and explores the implications of the moral issues raised by The Witch-Hunt Narrative for child sexual abuse victims, perpetrators, child welfare and law enforcement professionals, scholars and researchers, and the public at large.

Social work in a digital age: ethical and risk management challenges.

Digital, online, and other electronic technology has transformed the nature of social work practice. Contemporary social workers can provide services to clients by using online counseling, telephone counseling, video counseling, cybertherapy (avatar therapy), self-guided Web-based interventions, electronic social networks, e-mail, and text messages. The introduction of diverse digital, online, and other forms of electronic social services has created a wide range of complex ethical and related risk management issues. This article provides an overview of current digital, online, and electronic social work services; identifies compelling ethical issues related to practitioner competence, client privacy and confidentiality, informed consent, conflicts of interest, boundaries and dual relationships, consultation and client referral, termination and interruption of services, documentation, and research evidence; and offers practical risk management strategies designed to protect clients and social workers. The author identifies relevant standards from the NASW Code of Ethics and other resources designed to guide practice.

Documentation in social work: evolving ethical and risk-management standards.

Social workers' understanding of the relevance of documentation has evolved over time. During the profession's earliest years, social workers viewed documentation primarily as a mechanism to facilitate theory building, research, and teaching. This was followed by social workers' development of detailed and sophisticated documentation standards for clinical and other direct practice settings. Most recently, social workers have begun to appreciate the relevance of documentation for risk-management purposes, particularly as a tool to protect clients and to protect practitioners in the event of an ethics complaint or lawsuit. This article updates the profession's literature on documentation by summarizing current ethical and legal standards. Implications for social work practice, supervision, management, and administration are addressed.

Boundary issues in social work: managing dual relationships.

Social work literature clearly demonstrates that ethical issues related to boundaries are among the most problematic and challenging. Boundary issues involve circumstances in which social workers encounter actual or potential conflicts between their professional duties and their social, sexual, religious, or business relationships. This article provides an overview of boundary issues in social work (circumstances involving dual and multiple relationships); presents a conceptually based typology of boundary issues in the profession; and provides guidelines to help social workers manage the boundary issues and risks that arise in practice.