Responsibilities of social workers in conducting ethical practice

Social workers have the responsibility of conducting and engaging into a social work ethically. Social workers have a deep knowledge of the value of the profession, relevant law and ethical standards that are necessary for the social service. Social workers manage and recognize the personal values that in an effective guide them to work on the professional practices. When making the ethical decisions and working according to the standards mentioned in the rule book. The principles that a social worker must acknowledge is to tolerate any sort of ambiguity that comes across during resolving the ethical conflicts, application of the strategies related to the ethical reasoning in order to arrive at the principled decisions (Dolgoff, Harrington & Loewenberg, 2012). This study deals with a case study which highlights a character Marie. This character needs a professional consultation, advice and counselling which will be provided by a social worker. 

According to the case study, Toni has asked for a help from a social worker to assist in finding an assisted living facility. Also, she has asked to convince her mother (Marie) to take her pain medication. Lisa also wants the social worker to convey to Marie, the benefits of the grandchildren that stay with the grandparents. Marie has also revealed that her another daughter named Lisa, might have taken an unopened bottle having the pain medicine.

When engaging with the family mentioned in the case study, a social worker needs to have the interpersonal skills. These interpersonal skills include the communication skills like the speaking and listening effectively. Listening skills are equally important in comparison to the speaking skills because, when engaging with the family members it is first necessary to understand the problems and issues faced by them. Thus, problems can be resolved effectively only when listened attentively. Effective strategies are made only after listening to the problems and conveying the solutions to the family members verbally. Interpersonal skills also include the conflict resolution skills. When engaging with a family, there will be instances where there will conflicting issues and they are inevitable. Thus, resolving such issues require the skills that reduce conflicts (Koprowska, 2014).

The areas that require the social worker to empathize is with the mental condition of Marie. According to Marie, she gets irritated with the children of Lisa and does not entertain the chaotic environment in home. Another area of empathy can be related to the mental state and shock that Marie experienced when she lost her friend and husband (Eriksson & Englander, 2017). 

Interpersonal skills required for social work in a family

Strengths- According to the case study, one of the prime strength is the decision of Marie to stay close to the two daughters (Lisa and Toni). Staying close to the family will give Marie a sense of security. On the other hand, Marie depicted a picture of an independent lady who worked hard to bring up her own business.

Resources- the resources that can be used in the assessment are the valuable inputs of information from Toni with respect to the various issues that she highlighted. Another resource can be drawn from the interpersonal skills of the social worker. The importance of the listening is vital for the purpose of extracting important information from the family members. This information can be used a s valid source of the resources.

Problems- The problematic areas are that, Marie had undergone knee replacement and is under a therapy to gain mobility. For this reason, Marie was prescribed drugs. However, one of the major issue is that, Marie refuses to take medicine as per the direction of the physician.

In order to further work with the with the case study of the family in future, the critical areas that needs to be identified are: according to Toni, her mother is experiencing difficulty in living alone and desperately needs to be sent to an assisted living facility. Another issue is that Lisa is taking advantage of Marie and taking her help to keep the children under Marie’s watch (Media.capella.edu, 2018).

The focus of the work is going to be keeping the family bonded together. Elder people require the constant care and watch. Because due to the ageing, there are certain age related issues like loss of memory, impaired mobility and reduced vision. Regarding the case of Marie, she wants to stay alone although in close proximity of her daughters. Although, her two daughters cannot take care of their mother and Marie herself is old enough to take her own care. Thus, sending Marie to an assisted living facility can atleast ease the issues currently faced by Marie and her family members (Lewinson, Robinson-Dooley & Grant, 2012).

The potential treatment goals include counselling of Marie to take the medicine as prescribed by the physician. The only reason for such a goal is to improve mobility of Marie. If Marie can be convinced to take medicine in a proper way, then she can recover faster from the knee replacement operation that she had under gone previously (Bentley & Walsh, 2013).

Empathy for the elderly in the family

According to the Social cognition theory, social cognition is used in communication, psychology and education which says that an individual’s capability to acquire the knowledge is directly related to the observing others through the social experiences and interactions. Especially the family mentioned in the case study requires a close observation of the various members. The behavior of Lisa is a bit different from that of Toni. The attitude of Lisa is a bit unethical and is irresponsible to a certain extent. The way she leaves her children under the watch of her ailing mother is creating further confusion and problem (Fiske & Taylor, 2013). 

Ethical reasoning is the capability of a person to develop ethical arguments, assess and identify the ethical issues from several directions (Valentine & Hollingworth, 2012). The first major ethical issue that arises is that both Lisa and Toni are in an ethical dilemma that they cannot take care of their mother and want her to be sent to an assisted living facility. Whereas, Lisa is seen to be violating the ethical principle because Lisa has been found to be leaving her children under the watch of Marie. Marie also feels irritated by the activities of her grandchildren. This tendency of Marie, is not ethically acceptable because important that the children must receive care from their grandparents. Another ethical dilemma can be identified from the perspective of Marie taking her own decision of retiring from business. She although did that out of her physical demands, but now she feels that she feels lonely without any purpose of life.

To resolve the ethical conflicts, there is a need to tolerate the ambiguity and it must include a process of identification of the ambiguities. One of the major ambiguity is regarding the fact that Marie complained that Lisa might have taken one of the unopened bottle of pain medicine. This is an area of ethical conflict between Lisa and Marie. However, this ethical conflict can be tolerated by the way that, Marie is having issues with forgetting certain stuff. She might have kept it somewhere and then might have forgotten the place. Thus, blaming Lisa for removing up one of her pain medicines. The another ethical conflict is that; Marie wants to stay alone. Whereas, Marie’s daughter has found that their mother is unable to take her own care. Thus, they want to shift Marie to an assisted living facility. This can be tolerated if Marie can be convinced that, she needs to shift to an assisted living facility in order to improve her health condition and reduce the felling of life with no purpose (Naswma.org, 2018).

The difficulties that might be faced by the family members due to the introduction of the treatment goals are:  firstly, the counselling done to Marie reveals can yield positive results if Marie follows it. This might improve the health condition of Marie and she might prefer to stay alone in her house. On the other hand, Lisa might find it easy to keep her children under the watch of Marie, which might further irritate her. The other aspect is that if Marie is sent to an assisted living facility, then the children of Lisa and Toni might not receive the care of the grandparent. 

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above study it can be concluded that, social workers through their work ability in counselling and changing lives of people that are facing difficulties in day to day life. However, a social worker must work in accordance with the ethical standards and the ethical principles to reduce any kind of issue that might affect the working environment. This particular study is based on a case study, that elaborates on the life of Marie and her two daughter Lisa and Toni. Marie has become an elderly lady and lacks the mobility and zeal due to knee replacement. A social worker is employed by the family assess the various issues faced by the family and devise strategies to mitigate them. 

Reference

Bentley, K. J., & Walsh, J. (2013). The social worker and psychotropic medication: Toward effective collaboration with clients, families, and providers. Cengage Learning.

Dolgoff, R., Harrington, D., & Loewenberg, F. M. (2012). Brooks/Cole Empowerment Series: Ethical Decisions for Social Work Practice. Cengage Learning.

Eriksson, K., & Englander, M. (2017). Empathy in social work. Journal of Social Work Education, 53(4), 607-621.

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2013). Social cognition: From brains to culture. Sage.

Koprowska, J. (2014). Communication and interpersonal skills in social work. Learning Matters.

Lewinson, T., Robinson-Dooley, V., & Grant, K. W. (2012). Exploring “home” at an assisted living facility: looking through residents’ lenses with Photovoice.

Media.capella.edu. (2018). Transcript. Media.capella.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2018, from https://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/MSW5007/TheCaseOfMarie/transcript.html

Naswma.org. (2018). Essential Steps for Ethical Problem-Solving – National Association of Social Workers. Naswma.org. Retrieved 19 January 2018, from https://www.naswma.org/page/100/Essential-Steps-for-Ethical-Problem-Solving.htm

Valentine, S., & Hollingworth, D. (2012). Moral intensity, issue importance, and ethical reasoning in operations situations. Journal of Business Ethics, 108(4), 509-523.