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Introduction
The profession of a social worker is meant to enhance human wellbeing by helping the needy people. In addition, it focuses on the empowerment of the socially marginalized people in a given society. In other words, the social work entails caring for the needy, which calls for professionals with the heart of caring for the people in need of social justice. It focuses on human needs in the social context and addresses them in the same context regardless of the situations that caused the social injustice circumstance. This profession needs professionals with a heart of helping the oppressed in the society, which implies that social workers should not be discriminative to victims of social injustice based on the events that caused the injustice. However, social workers are humans too and in most cases, they accord social injustice to the victims based on the victims criminal activities or unethical behaviors. With regard to such reasons that could make a social worker discriminate victims, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) developed the code of ethics that aims at containing cases of social injustice fueled by social workers.
Social injustices without personal-professional value conflict
Many people are in need of social justice in the contemporary world and their situations may have been caused by various reasons such as economic factors, natural factors, political factors, social behaviors, and culture. However, these factors contribute to the development of certain attitudes that at times contribute to social workers personal value and professional ethics conflicts. Personal values are naturally embedded to the human character, and in some cases, they fuel certain attitudes towards the victims of social injustices based on the reason behind the victims situation. This aspect may have adverse effects towards the social work profession, hence the need to have professional ethics in the profession (Doyle et al., 2009).
The majority of social injustice victims are in their situations due to economic reasons. Increased cost of living in a society leads to poor economic situations, which mostly affect low-income earners in the case of developed nations, but the case may extend to the majority of the population in the third world nations. These people are most vulnerable to poverty, which makes them incapable of meeting their basic needs satisfactorily. In such a situation, whenever social workers intervene to address the social crisis affecting such victims, it is hard to have personal and professional value conflict as poverty is a generally accepted vice across the world and everybody can fall a victim (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2007).
Natural factors also cause social injustices to the people, and thus disaster management bodies address such factors and some of these bodies include the Red Cross and the United Nations among others. These organizations rely on social workers who more than often work as volunteers in case of disasters. Natural factors that cause disasters include tsunamis, earthquakes, fire disasters, huger crises due to poor weather conditions and many others. Natural disasters have adverse effects to the peoples livelihoods and they make the victims permanently or temporarily independent of social assistance. It is very hard for the social workers to fall victims of professional and personal value conflict when addressing the needs of victims of natural disasters.
Political factors are also a major contributor to the cases of social injustices to people in the contemporary world. Poor political practices are the root cause of the deplorable economic situations in a vast majority of third world countries due to poor leadership dominated by self-interests unlike in the developed nations where patriotism is the dominant virtue of leadership. Political factors have contributed to civil wars in many countries across the world. Civil wars cause poverty as citizens move away to other regions in search of peace and end up as refugees in foreign countries and regions. In such situations, these people rely heavily on donations and help of social workers due to lack of income to cater for their needs. It is very hard for social workers to encounter professional and personal value conflicts in catering for the needs of such victims.
Social injustices eliciting personal-professional value conflict
Unacceptable social behaviors also contribute to social injustices of the perpetrators. Unacceptable social behaviors are known to cause personal and professional value conflict to the social workers. Victims of social injustice due to unacceptable social behaviors mainly fall into two groups. One group comprises the victims who are oppressed by the party that commits the unacceptable social behavior, while the other group comprises the victims of social injustice due to the action of the party committing unacceptable behavior. In other words, unacceptable social behaviors have two fold impacts on social injustice where one is a result of committing the act and the other is affected by the act committed (Mattison, 2010).
Looking into the victim of social injustice due to committing unacceptable social behavior, there are various reasons why a victim commits such an act, and various ways in which social workers may experience personal and professional value conflict. A person may commit unacceptable social behavior due to natural reasons. Such natural reasons may include mental illness, poverty, and social stigma. However, mental illness is a special case and the law recognizes it as an unfortunate natural reason that has adverse effects on livelihood, and hence social workers are supposed to take care of victims of mental illnesses.
Poverty and social stigma also contribute to the committing of antisocial behaviors, but such elements break the law and thus they are punishable. In most cases, law offenders are punished in legal correctional facilities such as jails and rehabilitation centers. Social workers play a major role in behavioral correction exercise of law offenders through counseling and providing for their social needs such as paying them visits and providing them with basic materials. Some social workers consider the effect of the law offenders behaviors to humanity and in such cases; the social workers see the offenders as criminals who deserve the ruthlessness of legal punishment. In such situations, personal values exceed the professional value and instead of caring for victims of social injustice, the social workers can mistreat the offenders contrary to the professional ethics (Dolgoff et al., 2005).
The last cause of social injustice is the cultural beliefs and practices especially the common ones amongst sects and groups that perpetrate social ills such as drugs and substance abuse. Such victims are in great need of social justice, which could be availed by social workers. However, a majority of people in the society has a bad attitude towards cultural behaviors practiced by such groupings, and hence it becomes difficult for social workers to deal with personal and professional values whenever called upon to assist such victims. Social workers are supposed to exercise their professional mandates only in the professional relationship context, which is hard to achieve at times due to attitudes arising from personal values regarding a victims situation.
Professional and Personal Values Conflict: Example Case
A man rapes a young girl of five years old and according to the law, he is convicted for fifteen years in jail. On the other hand, the young girl and her parents have to undergo a series of counseling sessions after the medication exercise. Both the man and the girl, together with her parents, are victims of social injustice, but the man is also the perpetrator of the situation. The social work profession ethic recognizes the rapists need to have a better life than the kind of life experienced in correctional centers. It becomes hard for the social worker to deal with such victims due to personal values, which suppress the need to take care of a needy person. On the contrary, such situation brings in the idea of helping out a criminal. This scenario evokes the idea of punishing rather than helping to the social worker due to aggression and pain caused by the criminal to the innocent child (Banks, 2006).
In such a situation, the social worker may fail to accomplish the professional ethic of service delivery to the client. On the other hand, the child and her parents need the assistance of a social worker as the rape act may result in social stigma among other adverse effects. It is always a hard task for social workers, especially those who deal with counseling such victims, as the case has little confidentiality as required by the social work professional ethics. Hence, a social worker is supposed to focus more on the betterment of a life on the verge of breakdown and rather not on the cause of the situation as this may cause personal values to overrule professional values. The real goal of a social work professional in dealing with the oppressed party, which in this case is a victim of rape, is to enhance the dignity and self-worth. This goal can only be achieved through integrity and competence of the profession, which the social work ethics recognizes as important elements for dealing with human relationships (Comartin, 2011).
Dealing with personal-professional values conflict
In order to deal with personal and professional values conflict, social workers are advised to resolve the conflict through consultations and considerations of the victims cultural and religious beliefs among other factors. Consultations in this case may be done through legal counsels, colleagues, social organization management, and other profession regulatory authorities. According to the National Association of Social Workers (2008), the obligation of enhancing human value to the victim of social injustice does not fall under the authority of an individual rather it falls on the entire profession. Hence, consultations are permitted across the entire profession bodies. Under conditions where personal and professional values are persistent and hard to deal with, a social worker is not bound by any professional ethic, but s/he has a right to apply the morally responsible measures possible in dealing with the problem.
This assertion implies that the profession requires a social worker to act under legal and moral authority when exercising his or her duties, which then forms the basis for ethical decision making in the social work profession. However, the National Association of Social Workers does not demand the adherence of ethics as stipulated in the social workers professional ethics guide because its violation does not imply the violation of law. Hence, the decision should be made through legal and judicial processes, which upholds the idea behind the social work being a profession of people of goodwill who act in good faith for the improvement of other peoples livelihoods.
With regard to social work professional ethics, personal values are considered as personal interests that play a major role in hindering the execution of professional mandates. Social workers are trained on the importance of the right to confidentiality of the victims affairs. Therefore, in order to achieve this demand, a social worker is supposed to act as a helping partner and give the best to solve the victims problem while retaining the confidentiality of the victim. In addition, while seeking consultations from other stakeholders, the social worker is supposed to inform them of the need to preserve the confidentiality of the victim, as this aspect is essential to both the profession and the victim (National Association of Social Workers, 2008).
It is also essential for a social worker to take enough time to understand the problem that a victim faces and develop possible solutions before engaging the victim. The discipline of taking enough time to study the victims problem is very essential for fighting over the personal and professional value conflicts. In addition, studying of the victims problem creates a room for understanding the reason that would have pushed the victim into committing a given antisocial behavior. This aspect enhances the ability of the social worker to offer the necessary assistance to the client based on understanding the problem that the victim could be going through. This discipline is the main objective of the social work profession, which is to help anyone in need of social assistance through enhancing self-worthiness.
Another crucial element for enhancing the execution of the roles of social workers mandate in the profession is to ensure the competence of the social worker. Social workers ought to be competent in dealing with social problems affecting their victims, which achievable through training, licensing, consultation services, and ensuring proper education requirements in the profession. This move ensures that a victim of social injustice gets necessary assistance based on the competence of the social worker dealing with the problem at hand. In addition, necessary competence is essential for suppressing personal values that would sabotage professional values.
Conclusion
The social work profession plays a critical role when dealing with all problems that affect human livelihood. The profession deals with problems arising from economic, political, cultural and antisocial behaviors among others. The biggest problem that affects the profession in the execution of its mandate is the personal and professional values conflict. Social workers are human beings who, just like any other human, develop attitudes based on personal judgments. The possible solution to this problem is ensuring that a social worker can do consultation from other stakeholders for further assistance when dealing with such problems. Other possible solutions include ensuring confidentiality of the victims information coupled with competence of the social workers, which is achievable via proper training and education requirements.
Reference List
Banks, S. (2006). Ethics and values in social work. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
Comartin, C. (2011). Dissonance between personal and professional values: resolution of an ethical dilemma. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 8(2), 5-14.
Dolgoff, R., Loewenberg, F., & Harrington, D. (2005). Ethical decisions for social work practice. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Doyle, O., Miller, S., & Mirza, Y. (2009). Ethical decision-making in social work: exploring personal and professional values. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 6(1), 134-234.
Mattison, M. (2010). Ethical decision-making: the person in the process. Journal of Social Work, 45 (8), 203-212.
National Association of Social Workers. (2008). Code of Ethics. Web.
Zastrow, C., & Kirst-Ashman, K. (2007). Understanding human behavior and the Social environment. Belmont, CA: Thomson Publishing.
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