NASW CODE OF ETHICS REVISIONS
As you may know, the National National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Board disallowed our reform attempts directed at Code of Ethics revisions. However, SWEC isn't giving up!
It turns out that the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) requires all social work programs to present a required lecture on the NASW Code to all BSW and MSW students during their first year of training. Luckily, clinical professor Emet Ma'Ayan and MSW student Robin Valdas of the Facundo Valdez School of Social Work at New Mexico Highlands University came up with the wonderful idea to develop a PowerPoint comparing the key principles of the NASW Code with SWEC's. As they suggested, such a comparison would make for a livelier and more reflective lecture/discussion on the professional ethics all social workers are expected to follow.
Given their valuable recommendation, SWEC has created such a PowerPoint (download the presentation here). We are sending this comparison to our 9,000 LinkedIn contacts, our 3,000 SWEC supporters, which includes you!
So, if you teach in a social work program, please consider using this when the required lecture occurs and/or send it along with this email to your colleagues. If you're practicing, perhaps it could be offered at an on-site training or even a "lunch and learn." After all, while only one in seven social workers is a member of NASW, every social worker is expected to follow its Code!
Why not use this short lecture as one small step towards making the NASW Code of Ethics reflect your concerns as well as those of our clients?
To learn more about the NASW Delegate Assembly, visit: https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Delegate-Assembly.
You can compare our revisions directly alongside the present Code principles below.
PROPOSED REVISIONS TO THE CODE OF ETHICS
PROPOSED REVISED TEXT
Value: Service
Ethical Principle: Social workers’ primary goal is to help people in need and to address social problems.
Social workers recognize service to others is a fundamental value that can only be achieved through a supportive work environment. Such support is required so that social workers can draw on their knowledge, values, and skills to help people in immediate need while also addressing systemic social problems.
CURRENT TEXT TO BE REVISED
Value: Service
Ethical Principle: Social workers’ primary goal is to help people in need and to address social problems.
Social workers elevate service to others above self-interest. Social workers draw on their knowledge, values, and skills to help people in need and to address social problems. Social workers are encouraged to volunteer some portion of their professional skills with no expectation of significant financial return (pro bono service).
Value: Social Justice
Ethical Principle: Social workers challenge social injustice.
Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people as well as related to both the funding streams affecting their livelihood and their agencies’ working conditions. Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities require skills that promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Because such activities require critical reflection and mindful practice, social workers promote a quality of work life that provides them the time, uninterrupted supervision, and reflection such skill sets demand. Social workers therefore strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for clients, community members, and themselves.
Value: Social Justice
Ethical Principle: Social workers challenge social injustice.
Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.
Value: Dignity and Worth of the Person
Ethical Principle: Social workers respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person.
The efforts of social workers are worthy of respect and dignity alongside that of the communities we work with. Social workers treat all people in a caring and respectful fashion, mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers take social action to ensure that communities, including their own, have access to self-determination. Social workers therefore seek to enhance communities’ capacity and opportunity to address their own needs and change social conditions, recognizing that they can do so as long as they themselves practice their own individual and collective advocacy. Social workers are responsible to their clients and their efforts to improve the broader society. They seek to resolve conflicts between clients’ interests and the broader society’s interests by taking social action on their own behalf and alongside those with whom they work in order to change society.
Value: Dignity and Worth of the Person
Ethical Principle: Social workers respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person.
Social workers treat each person in a caring and respectful fashion, mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers promote clients’ socially responsible self-determination. Social workers seek to enhance clients’ capacity and opportunity to change and to address their own needs. Social workers are cognizant of their dual responsibility to clients and to the broader society. They seek to resolve conflicts between clients’ interests and the broader society’s interests in a socially responsible manner consistent with the values, ethical principles, and ethical standards of the profession.
Value: Importance of Human Relationships
Ethical Principle: Social workers recognize the central importance of human relationships.
Social workers understand that relationships between and among people are an important vehicle for change. Social workers engage people as partners in the helping process. Social workers seek to strengthen relationships among people in a purposeful effort to promote, restore, maintain, and enhance the well-being of individuals, families, social groups, organizations, and communities. For this value to be maintained, social workers strive to foster the same reciprocal, respectful partnership throughout their agencies and the profession itself.
Value: Importance of Human Relationships
Ethical Principle: Social workers recognize the central importance of human relationships.
Social workers understand that relationships between and among people are an important vehicle for change. Social workers engage people as partners in the helping process. Social workers seek to strengthen relationships among people in a purposeful effort to promote, restore, maintain, and enhance the well-being of individuals, families, social groups, organizations, and communities.
Value: Integrity
Ethical Principle: Social workers behave in a trustworthy manner.
Social workers are continually aware of the profession’s mission, values, ethical principles, and ethical standards and practice in a manner consistent with them inside their agencies and the communities in which they work. Social workers should take measures to care for themselves professionally and personally, including advocacy to ensure safe, secure, and supportive work environments. Social workers act honestly and responsibly and promote ethical practices on the part of the organizations with which they are affiliated.
Value: Integrity
Ethical Principle: Social workers behave in a trustworthy manner.
Social workers are continually aware of the profession’s mission, values, ethical principles, and ethical standards and practice in a manner consistent with them. Social workers should take measures to care for themselves professionally and personally. Social workers act honestly and responsibly and promote ethical practices on the part of the organizations with which they are affiliated.
Value: Competence
Ethical Principle: Social workers practice within their areas of competence and develop and enhance their professional expertise.
Social workers continually strive to increase their professional knowledge and skills and to apply them in practice and seek support from their agencies to do so. Social workers can expect that their contributions and those of the people and communities with whom they work will add value to the knowledge base of the profession.
Value: Competence
Ethical Principle: Social workers practice within their areas of competence and develop and enhance their professional expertise.
Social workers continually strive to increase their professional knowledge and skills and to apply them in practice. Social workers should aspire to contribute to the knowledge base of the profession.