This article explores the development of professional training for youth leaders (now, youth workers) in England and Wales between 1939 and 1945. The article identifies the state's construction of young people as a problematic social category at a time of national crisis and its mobilization of youth leadership as part of the war effort. The Board of Education supported, sometimes tacitly, the development of courses in some universities and voluntary organizations for youth leaders. By 1942 full-time courses of training existed (...) at five universities and university colleges and one voluntary organization and were recognized by the Board under Circular 1598. This article explores tensions between the discourse of voluntarism, in which youth leadership had traditionally been set, and the newly developing discourse of professionalism. The article suggests that these discourses are fundamentally ethical and tensions lay in contested definitions of the ?good youth leader?. Little consensus existed on what counted as the good leader, animating a conflict between voluntarism and state provision. The article concludes by drawing distinctions and continuities between the war years and the present day. (shrink)

In recent years a growing body of literature on the ethics of care has made significant contributions to understanding the multiple dimensions of care. Feminist theories provide the resource for this interdisciplinary research in which there has been scant attention given to black women's approaches to moral deliberations and understandings of care. Although there are differing interests and diversity among black women, this article seeks to disrupt current frameworks surrounding the ethics of care and discusses a more relevant conceptual framework (...) to bring diverse perspectives to bear in the current wave of interest in caring. By applying black feminist thought to the complexities of black womanhood in the broader society, this paper considers cultural antecedents and lived experiences as a starting point for ethical concerns in reclaiming the everyday world as self-defined by black women themselves to open up new insights into care and its multiple dimensions. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;Existentialist philosophy has long been recognised as a significant influence on psychotherapy and counselling and there is an established 'school' of existential therapy. However, in social work there is no equivalent and the existentialist influence is far less discernible. Existentialism is conspicuous by its absence from the social work curriculum. ;Existentialism is a philosophy which places human freedom at the forefront of its attempts to understand the various dimensions of existence. But (...) this is no easy freedom, no caprice or idealism. It is a freedom grounded in the myriad constraints, influences and sober lessons of complex social and political interactions. It is a freedom which entails responsibility, ownership of one's actions and their consequences. Such freedom is both a heavy burden and the key to overcoming a range of problems of our own making--self-made barriers to deny freedom and responsibility at both an individual and collective level. ;The existentialist portrayal of humanity is of people seeking to make sense of an absurd existence, located within a broader context of structured inequalities and the oppression and alienation they engender. It is argued that the problems social workers face have a significant existential dimension and it is the crux of this thesis that an approach informed by the tenets of existentialism is necessary to do justice to this complex subject. ;Existentialism is a philosophy of PRAXIS of thinking and doing. As such it offers a basis for social work theory and practice by constructing an overarching framework which seeks to account for the many facets of social work--theoretical, practical, moral, political and of course existential. ;This thesis is therefore an exploration of the issues surrounding the application of existentialism to social work and, flowing from this, the formulation of a set of principles for practice. (shrink)

This article reports on exploratory research into social workers? perceptions and actions regarding ?forewarning? clients of their child abuse reporting obligations as a limitation of confidentiality at relationship onset. Ethical principles and previous research on forewarning are discussed prior to stating the research methods and presenting findings. Data obtained from South Australian social workers engaged in human service work with adult family members articulate a strong desire to practise in accordance with professional codes of ethics. However, the findings suggest that (...) proactive forewarning is extremely infrequent, with minimized forewarning accomplished only in response to client-initiated inquiry and where prior suspicions of child abuse may exist. Generally, discomfort with forewarning was found to result in its avoidance due to concerns about client retention, working in tense relationships and personal uncertainties about client's reactions towards participants. Through the avoidance of forewarning, participants are potentially supporting their own personal feelings and viewpoints more actively than the rights of others. This may correlate with having a private model of professionalism in opposition to a public model, in which relationship parameters are presented honestly and openly to clients when establishing the practice context?a problematic issue for ethical social work. (shrink)

This paper explores the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on decision making in adult social care in England and Wales. It focuses on a review of the Act by the government in June 2006 and subsequent new guidance on implementation addressed to policy makers, managers and practitioners. The meaning of ?rights? in contemporary legal and social theory is considered and the potential of human rights law to improve the experiences of service users is evaluated in the light of (...) recent research findings and proposed policy changes. (shrink)

Human rights are a central part of a social worker's value base in contemporary practice, but the structures by which social work services are delivered can adversely affect practitioners? abilities to uphold service user rights. This article describes the organizational development of social work services in England and the evolution of a rights focus for the practice of social work. It uses two cases, participation by children and young people looked after by the local authority and parents with learning difficulties, (...) to determine what prevents the delivery of rights at practice level. We argue that the structures which are the product of historical development prevent workers delivering a service that is anti-oppressive and grounded in a rights-based approach to practice. This suggests that the recent changed arrangements for the delivery of social work offer the opportunity to address human rights within practice and reinvigorate the profession. The division of the profession between children's trusts and adult social services within separate local authority departments or care trusts should make dialogue between specialist social workers, which has been suppressed by internal structures, possible. Such a dialogue could contribute to saving the profession from the disintegration that its division threatens, while advancing the human rights agenda. (shrink)

This paper focuses attention on the ethical issues concerning the involvement of young service users as co-researchers. In particular the article offers an examination of the limitations of the term ?service user?, comments on degrees of participation and explores the ethical issues prior to the start of the research, during the research and after the research has been completed. Particular emphasis is focused on the topics of: the funders of research, ethics committees, valuing contributions, informed consent, confidentiality, authorship and ending (...) the research. The article also suggests that this is a complex area worthy of further exploration and that many of the ethical challenges identified for working with young service users also need to be considered for young service user co-researchers. (shrink)

In September 2004 a local authority council commissioned the University of Dundee to undertake a small evaluation of a pilot social work post set up in 2003 and located in the palliative care team of the local Health Trust. The evaluation was to enable decisions to be made regarding the continuation and establishment of this specialist post into the financial year beginning 2005 and beyond. The university was asked to consult clients of the social worker, their relatives and relatives of (...) clients who had died, and the staff in the palliative care team as well as staff in the Adult and Older People's Services of the local authority. The evaluation was eventually completed in March 2006 but the expected date of completion by the local authority had been March 2005. The delay was caused almost entirely by the impact of the National Health Service (NHS) research ethics process. (shrink)

This paper considers the accountability of professionals who are involved in situations of the failure of their organization to perform its expected role properly; the case of infant Caleb Ness, who died despite the surveillance of welfare agencies, is taken as an illustration. Following Bovens (?The Quest for Responsibility: Accountability and Citizenship in Complex Organisations?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998), it is accepted that there is an irreducible element of individual personal responsibility when preventable organizational failures occur through professional incompetence (...) or corruption. The type of guidance available from specialized professional knowledge and from ethical codes is appraised. This is contrasted with various theoretical approaches to practical reasoning, which are offered as a more relevant perspective on professional misconduct. Practical reason necessarily addresses itself to a reality much more uncertain, fluid and contingent than envisaged by the standard conceptions of professional knowledge and ethics. Rather then being derived strictly from impersonal abstract rules and formal knowledge, practical reason in large part reflects the character and personality of its owner. It is argued that, since professional responsibility is always partly personal, professional misconduct can be understood as a failure of practical reason. (shrink)

This paper presents a profile of the welfare regime in Lebanon which is posited on the twin precepts of human ethics and welfare particularism. It highlights the key role that moral values play in the conceptualization and implementation of social policy, as well as in the measurement of welfare outcomes. This is marked by the dominance of duty, traditionalism and elitism in the ethics of religious welfare in Lebanon. The paper argues that the social welfare regime in Lebanon overlaps with (...) the debates on the ethics of care and on virtue ethics in Western moral philosophy. This is also linked in with contemporary conceptualizations of religious ethics in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The paper asserts that religious ethics is a valid endeavour in its own right and an ever more pertinent subject matter for the study of social welfare and social policy. This challenges the traditional dichotomy between reason and faith which has subdued the relevance of religion to public life. Indeed, religion, the nuclear family and clientelism networks are shown to play a critical role in Lebanese social welfare, such that, in spite of state incapacity, the welfare regime there cannot be considered rudimentary. The method adopted for this research was a large qualitative case study involving service providers and users at the Ministry of Social Affairs and five leading Christian and Muslim religious welfare organizations in Lebanon. (shrink)

Although a ?realist? stance is sometimes contrasted with a ?principled? one, this article argues that realism is, of itself, an important ethical principle. Acknowledging the problems that exist in defining ?reality?, and the fact that the nature of reality is contested, the article nevertheless insists on an ?out there? reality. It asserts that the existence of this external reality is, in practice, generally accepted, and indeed must be accepted if we are to make the important distinction between truth and falsehood. (...) The article proposes that discourse which is not grounded in the concrete reality of the specific situations in which social work is practised is potentially harmful because it results in a decoupling of language from what it is supposed to represent and creates a potential for language to be used to deceive. The article then discusses ?Realism about Outcomes? and ?Realism about Context? as two out of a number of different areas in which realism is important in practice and policy making. It concludes that genuinely ethical social work practice and policy making require that we attempt to engage with the world as it actually is. (shrink)

During the 16-year civil war in Mozambique thousands of children were separated from their families as a direct or indirect result of conflict and displacement. International organizations lent support to a national family tracing and reunification programme coordinated by the government Department for Social Action. Drawing on the findings of an empirical study of the sustainability of substitute family care, this article describes the tensions associated with the involvement of international organizations during the emergency conditions of the war, in post-war (...) rehabilitation and in longer term development. It explores the ethical dimensions of social welfare interventions across borders and continents and concludes by arguing a case for international humanitarian agencies to base their interventions to ?help? separated children on deeper knowledges of the social and political history, and the values, beliefs and normative practices of the populations with whom they work. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest an alternative approach to ethics in social work: virtue ethics. We argue that Habermas's theory of communicative action and discourse ethics needs to be supplemented with virtue ethics to provide an account useful to social work. In these times, sensitivity to others is needed for social work to succeed as a profession interested in combating the complacency, self-interest and lack of compassion evident in cutbacks to social welfare programmes and the resultant concerns with outcomes and (...) efficiencies that have all but obliterated care and compassion. We see in Habermas a furthering of Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy, most importantly with respect to his focus on emancipatory knowing?the critically reflective knower who knows self as the person doing the knowing. Habermas's distinction between values (objective), ethics (social) and morals (subjective) makes the province of emancipatory knowing (his epistemological theory) consistent with his moral theory?morality is personal. (shrink)

Emerging child welfare policies promoting preventive and early intervention services present a challenge to professional ethics, raising questions about how to balance respect for service users with concern for social justice. This article explains how the UK policy involves shifting the balance of power away from families towards state and professional decision making. The policy is predicated on sharing information between professionals to inform risk and need assessment and so poses a problem for the ethic of confidentiality in a helping (...) relationship. This article examines the arguments for information sharing and questions whether the predicted benefits for children outweigh the cost of eroding family privacy and changing the nature of professional relationships with service users. (shrink)

This article reviews pertinent literature and presents findings from recent research to illustrate how CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) private law practitioners understand, experience and manage the tension between empowerment and protection in welfare report enquiries. The traditional approach in the United Kingdom has been for children to be protected, especially when their divorced or separated parents are in conflict, but the balance is changing, as calls for the active participation of children in decisions that affect (...) them continue to grow louder. (shrink)