How social workers navigate the ethics of forcing care on resistant clients
A new study reveals how care managers in Sweden wrestle with a core tension: respecting clients' autonomy versus their legal duty to provide support. By analyzing case conferences, researchers found that ethical deliberation happens informally, in daily conversations—raising questions about whether these critical decisions are adequately documented or consistent across organizations.
Originaltitel: Doing “ethics work” in practice: An analysis of care managers’ collegial discussions concerning reluctant clients
<p>Few studies have explored the moral and ethical dimensions of how, in practice, socialworkers talk about and handle cases as part of their daily work. At the same time,identifying and examining the ethical dimensions of actual social work practice can bechallenging because ethics is often hidden within the complex particularities of daily work.This article applies and develops Sarah Banks’ conceptualisation of “ethics work” toexamine how care managers in Sweden are “doing ethics”, while seeking and providingcollegial support and guidance on how to deal with the wishes of adult (potential) serviceusers who are reluctant to accept support – or whose wishes in the matter are difficult todetermine. The study is based on an analysis of 14 audio-recorded case conferences. With the help of Banks’ conceptualisation, the analysis makes visible how the case discussions inquestion encompass a complex “doing of ethics”, by means of which the welfare ofindividuals is balanced against care managers’ legal duty to adhere, without exception, tothe principle of self-determination. The findings suggest that further research that appliesand develops Banks’ conceptualisation of ethics work by examining “actual” social workpractice in situ, while recognising the particularities of the social and societal context inwhich this work is taking place, could provide new knowledge and understanding aboutboth the specific and common challenges that social workers face in different parts of the world. It could also make the ethical dimensions of social work practice more widely recognised and valued.</p>