∂ Creative practice: organisational and ethical issues in working outside the rules Sarah Banks

∂ The ‘dilemmatic space’ of social work Promoting human rights, social justice and social order as fundamental goals. Personal relationships/empathy, equitable treatment of service users and rationing resources and controlling poor/marginalised people as means. Within a framework of personal, political and professional values and law, social policies, organisational policies and rules. Age-old dialectical tension between social workers as critical, autonomous, responsible professionals versus social workers as officials, bureaucrats, controllers.

∂ Questions to consider 1. How do social workers decide when it is ethically acceptable, indeed a duty, to ignore, bend or break rules or to go against 'established ways of working'? 2. What is the responsibility of social workers and managers for contributing to the ethical climate of the organisations where they work and pursuing organisational change?

∂ Using cases from ‘Practising Social Work Ethics Around the World’ 26 real life ethics cases from different countries – from China to Finland. Two commentaries by authors from different countries on each of 20 cases.

∂ What we can learn from the cases and commentaries 1.The types of circumstances people involved in social work find ethically challenging. 2.The variety of ways of constructing ethics cases. 3.The variety of ways commentators respond to ethics cases. 4.The extent to which ‘social work ethics’ is an internationally recognisable subject area and what social workers practising in different countries and contexts can learn from reflecting on accounts of each other’s ethical challenges.

∂ Types of ethical challenges 1.Negotiating conflicting rights/interests of different parties. E.g. whether to allow a gay man to adopt a child in Turkey. 2.Conflicts between the values of different professions. E.g. police officers do not respect professional confidentiality of a French social worker’s relationship with an asylum seeker. 3.Issues about the role of the social worker and professional boundaries. E.g. whether a student in Lithuania should accept a gift from a grateful family of refugees from Chechenia. 4.Responding to poor/unethical practice. E.g. social workers in China witness incompetent and unethical practice by volunteers helping in an earthquake zone. 5.Deciding whether to break, bend or challenge the organisational rules. E.g. a social worker in the Occupied Palestinian Territories deciding not to report child abuse to Israeli authorities

∂ Some responses to organisational barriers to ethical practice 1.Breaking or bending rules 2.Conforming to organisational rules 3.Creative practice

∂ 1. Breaking or bending rules E.g. not reporting child abuse in Palestine and Denmark; allowing health care insurance for an ineligible child in Peru. Social worker as hero. Ethical reasoning. Professional integrity. “…struck at the heart of my professional identity as a social worker… My decision, and that of my colleagues, was to give priority to the child’s right to health, and also the ‘best interests of the child’ as defined in the International Convention for the Rights of the Child … to act without betraying our principles and values as caring professionals” (Social Worker, Peru)

∂ 2. Conforming to organisational rules E.g. refusing welfare benefits to illegal migrants in Japan; following the law in work with asylum seekers in Australia. Inability to challenge; social worker as victim; moral distress. “As an ethical social worker, I would like to have taken more action to protect her human rights, but at the same time, I was a civil servant with a legal obligation to uphold the civil law. My supervisor also told me that if the woman had married legally, this problem would not have happened. However, I did not agree with the result of the case in terms of social work ethics (social justice and human rights)” (Japanese social worker).

∂ 3. Creative practice E.g. NGO in Pakistan working with maliks (tribal leaders) to pursue women’s and children’s education. Ethical reasoning. Commitment to social justice ends. “The dilemmas faced by KK are often to do with knowing when their approach is acceptably pragmatic and when it has tipped over into risking the compromise of their values”. (Pakistan NGO)

∂ Solidarity and collective action Some cases framed as dilemmas for individual social workers (e.g. Japanese case) Some as matters for team/organisation (e.g. Peruvian case, Pakistan case) Importance of solidarity with service users and with colleagues, other social workers and trades unions Collective responsibility for resistance 11

∂ Social Work Action Network Ethics and Social Welfare journal Ethics and Social Welfare Network to join,