Ethics & Direct Practice

(6 CEUs in Ethics for Full Day; 3 CEUs for the Half-Day Course)

Course Description

This course focuses on ethical reasoning as it applies to the resolution of ethical conflicts that arise in direct practice in the social service professions. The primary purpose of the course is to demonstrate ways for improving ethical reasoning, especially in its practical professional aspects. Such improvement can be of significant benefit to social service professionals and their clients when professionals approach and work to resolve the most difficult ethical problems that they confront in direct practice. We will focus on ways in which consistent, critical thinking about ethical issues is a powerful resource in the helping professions. Along the way, we will address factors that allow sincere, intelligent people to reach divergent conclusions about similar problems, and we will consider how such disagreement can be accommodated.

Learning Objectives

• Identify and explain crucial features of ethical thinking
• Explain the nature of ethical problems and dilemmas, and give examples involving direct practice
• Identify the principal themes of the Code of Ethics of NASW and show how in general terms they apply to such problems
• Demonstrate ways in which ethical thinking applies to direct practice, and identify some effective ways to approach ethical problems
• Explain the general relationship between ethical theories and their practical application to the professional setting, especially in direct practice

Bibliography and some suggestions for further reading

Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Approved by the 1996 NASW Delegate Assembly and revised by the 1999 NASW Delegate Assembly.
www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp

DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition, text revision. American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Sir David Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Beauchamp, Tom L. and LeRoy Walters, eds. Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 6th ed.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2003.

Kant, Immanuel. Foundations (or Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
There are many editions currently available.

Mappes, Thomas and Jane Zembaty, eds. Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism (1863). There are many editions currently available of the entire book, often as a part of a collection of readings.

Rachels, James. Elements of Moral Philosophy. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Reamer, Frederic G. Ethical Standards in Social Work. NASW Press, 1998

Shanahan, Timothy and Robin Wang, eds. Reason and Insight - Western and Eastern Perspectives on the Pursuit of Moral Wisdom. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth (Thomson Learning), 2003.

(6 CEUs in Ethics)