NASW Social Work Talks - EP4: Ethics with Dawn Hobdy

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

Dawn Hobdy, NASW Director of Ethics & Professional Review, discusses how the Code of Ethics changed, examples of challenges that social workers face, and how NASW is helping social workers meet the challenges they face every day. See EP4 show notes for resources

Welcome to NASW Social Work Talks. The National Association of Social Workers is one of the largest membership organizations of professional social workers in the world. NASW works to enhance the professional growth and development of its members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social work policies. With our mission in mind, the purpose of NASW Social Work Talks is to inform, educate, and inspire. We encourage you to learn more about NASW by visiting www.socialworkers.org.

And we thank you for joining us for this episode. Hi, my name is Greg Wright, Public Relations Manager at the National Association of Social Workers, and I'm your host today on the latest episode of Social Work Talks. Our guest today is Dawn Habdi, Director of Ethics and Professional Review at NASW, and we're here to talk about the latest revision of the NASW Code of Ethics. Welcome, Dawn. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. How long has the NASW Code of Ethics been around, and how many revisions have we had? Well, it's a great question. The first Code of Ethics was adopted by the Delegate Assembly in 1960. So this October, NASW will be celebrating its 58th anniversary of the Code of Ethics. So that's pretty exciting. And there's been nine revisions.

So we just established the last revision that went into effect this past January of 2018, and that's the ninth revision of the Code of Ethics. So there's been quite a few revisions since the inception in 1960. Why is the Code of Ethics so important for social workers? I mean, I don't want to use a religious term, but is it almost like a social work Bible? Yeah, I think that's a great question. We need guidance. Social work is a very challenging job, and we're put in a lot of positions where we have to make difficult decisions. And I, for one, as a social worker, really appreciate having this document that helps guide my decision making. And so we're not left to our own personal morals and values to make decisions about how we practice social work. This document, this Code of Ethics, really guides our practice. It gives us the values, the principles, and the standards that help guide our ethical decision-making as professional social workers.

So it is well-respected around the world. And, again, as a social worker, I'm very grateful to have that document that kind of supports how we go about doing our work. Thank you. Could you get more into this latest round of the revisions and how that process went? Sure. So there's just been a significant growth in the use of technology in all aspects of social work practice. And this has been for at least the past 10, maybe more years. And NASW, we were actually a bit delayed in actually getting to the point of looking at our code of ethics to just ask the question,

does our code currently provide enough guidance around the use of technology? Now, some people might say the code of ethics applies to all situations, and it's obvious that it also applies to the use of technology. But the task force was appointed by the NASW Board of Directors to ask the questions and to determine whether we needed to have more specific language that addressed concerns around the use of technology. So first we had to answer the question. The answer to the question was yes, we needed additional language that would provide better guidance for social workers around the use of technology. And what went into this process was that there were, I believe, eight task force members that were appointed by the NASW president.

And if you like, I could share those names. Yeah, surely. So the members of the task force were David Barry, Dr. Alan Barsky, Dr. Frederick Reamer, Dr. Kimstrom Gottfried, Mr. Louis Machuca, Mr. Bo Walker, who's a member of the National Ethics Committee, myself, Dawn Hobdy, and our staff member from NESW was Andrea Murray. And we also had guidance throughout general counsel. So these eight members from around the country were appointed by the president to really review the Code of Ethics and to determine what changes needed to be made around the code. Just generally, we did a really good job, I believe, at asking the relevant questions. And so there were about nine things that we looked at that guided our decision-making around the code.

I won't go into the nine of them, but some of the things we talked about were what's the purpose of this change? Does it fit the overall purpose of the code, or is it something that can be addressed through another mean? Is this a standard, or is this something that really needs to be addressed around ethics? We also talked about whether or not there would be a consensus within a profession about whether this is an appropriate change. We thought it was really important to talk about innovation. So would these changes in the code make it difficult for our professionals to be innovative? We need to make sure that social workers are still able to compete. And the great thing about technology is that it really does provide opportunities that we've never had before

in terms of reaching clients that we've never reached, in terms of being creative. And social workers are going to have to use technology and to remain competitive with other helping fields. And so we didn't want to say you can't use technology. We really wanted to say you can use technology and here's how you do it ethically. So asking the right questions were really important. We also wanted to make sure that we weren't and we still allow social workers to have personal lives. And so we asked ourselves, would there be additional scrutiny? Would this new recommended language result in more complaints being filed against social workers frivolously?

So would it increase unwarranted complaints? We wanted to make sure that we weren't going to put our social workers in a position that it made it more difficult to practice social work. So we asked that and other questions. And in answering those questions, we determined that the language that you see now in the new code of ethics was the appropriate language to add. I want to ask one ethical example question. Is it a wise move for a social worker to friend a client on Facebook? What do our new technology standards tell us about that? That's a great question.

The short answer is no. I always just say, you know, again, and we did add this to the preamble, that for the most part, the things that are not allowed in person are not allowed through the use of technology. For me, I always think of two things. This is friending. It's a friend request on social media. For those two reasons alone, I think it would be obvious that it's inappropriate, but it's not, and I understand that. And for many professionals, especially the younger social workers who have grown up through the use of this technology, it gets a little clouded. However, the answer is it would be inappropriate to friend a client on social media.

It would be addressed in conflicts of interest, and it would be considered a dual relationship with a client. That is a personal social media site, and, again, it would be considered friending a client the same way you would friend them out in person. One other thing is a lot of folks look up people on social media in order to get a better idea of who that person is, their views on politics and other issues. Is it okay for a social worker to actually do an investigation on social media about a client? That's another great question, and that is also addressed in the new standards in the Code of Ethics. And so the language that we added to the code requires that social workers are very careful about making decisions to Google clients or to search clients on the Internet. There are a lot of reasons why. One, I think that there's a huge risk of that negatively affecting the therapeutic relationship.

There are issues around trust. There are also a lot of opportunities to either receive the wrong information or to get information about someone on social media where it turns out that it's not the actual person. So there's a lot of room for error. But most importantly, I think that clients deserve the opportunity to be informed about when and why a social worker would need to search them on the Internet. prior to this technology opportunities that we had we would ask the questions of our clients and it helped to build trust if there was a question we wanted to know we would ask

if we found out a client was being dishonest we would address that in therapy i think that was an important part of the therapeutic relationship and i still think that it is i think it leaves a lot of room for error you know i mean how many people do we have with the same name how many times do we misunderstand something that we read you know so the code does require that social workers can only do so in extenuating circumstances where there's a threat or harm to the client or another person or again if there's just an extenuating circumstance and social workers are going to have to be prepared to defend that decision and to justify and to document it.

And, yeah, I think we're going to hear more about that. It's too easy for social workers, but they really have to ask themselves the question of how does this impact the therapeutic relationship. Gotcha. If I'm a social worker, should I make my social media accounts private so that a casual person cannot just Google me and have access to everything that I am posting on my social media?

I think that's a good standard of practice. I think that we should all do that. The problem is that we all know that even when we think it's private, it just isn't. I always talk to social workers about how many times do you see in a political arena someone does something inappropriate, and the first thing they do is access that person's text messages. And these are messages that they thought were deleted, are out there in the cloud, you know. So the information is never private.

We've actually had cases where a client more than once has filed a complaint because they were able to find information about themselves on their social worker's blog or on their Facebook page. And even in situations where the client's names were not used, the clients were able to identify themselves or felt that they might be speaking of them. And we want to avoid those. So I think it's probably impossible to actually have privacy on social media. Gotcha. Now, you've actually had a webinar on these new ethics changes. I was wondering if this webinar is still available now online, Dawn. Oh, wonderful.

Yes. So we conducted the official NASW training on the revisions to the NASW Code of Ethics this past October 25th. And I say official because we know that this is an exciting time for the profession, and I know that many professionals are developing different trainings around the revisions to this code of ethics. And that's okay, but NASW did develop the official training, and it is available if you go to www.socialworkers.org backslash about backslash ethics. you'll see on that page, take the official NASW national training on the revisions to the NASW Code of Ethics. It is available for free. You can also take it and earn a CE credit.

As a follow-up to that training, we've conducted so far three Q&A sessions. The Q&A sessions were open to the public, and it was simply an opportunity for professionals who have reviewed the webinar to ask questions. They were all well received, and we will be placing those Q&A sessions on our YouTube channel in the near future. And we have one follow-up coming up on April 12th, I believe. We're conducting another Q&A session specifically for faculty and students. So we're encouraging faculty and students to review the webinar and then join us for that Q&A session. We think that the focus for students and faculty and the questions that might arise might feel a little different. And so we want to give them an opportunity to talk to each other

and to talk to us specifically about issues that students are experiencing or things they need to be preparing for as they enter the workforce, and then ways that faculty can prepare to continue to teach around these new standards. So those are the things that we have coming up. And again, and the official training is now available on the NASW website. Don, ethics also offers consultations to members. Please tell us just a little bit more about that and how NASW members can actually gain access to that. Sure.

So the ethics consultations are a service that have been provided for NASW members even before I arrived, so over the past 20 years. probably one of my favorite parts of the job. It provides an ASW member, so it is a member benefit, the opportunity to call in four days a week to simply ask questions. We face ethical dilemmas daily in our work and to have an opportunity to do a confidential consultation to just kind of talk through your dilemma. We basically guide members through the standards and the code that relate to their situation. We also talk about other considerations. So whether there are legal considerations, human resource considerations, whatever the other considerations might be,

so that they can make the best decisions. The most important thing is that we don't make decisions for the members. We don't tell them what to do. But we provide the guidance, the tools that will help them make the best decisions for themselves. We receive approximately 15 to 20 calls a day. So So it's a really active part of the work that we do. And I always just feel grateful to have the opportunity to hear where the social workers are feeling challenged and to be able to provide some guidance around those issues. Dawn, I was wondering if you could tell our audience a little bit more about yourself. How long have you been a social worker and how did you get involved in ethics? Wow, great question.

I've been a social worker since 1995. five, graduated from Howard University School of Social Work, proud graduate of Howard University School of Social Work, and jumped right into the field. And so I spent my first seven years of my career as a director of social services in a long-term care facility. So I started off in gerontology. I still consider myself a gerontologist. And through serving as a director at a nursing home, I had the opportunity to develop an ethics committee out of need, and that spiked my interest in ethics. An opportunity opened up at the National Association of Social Workers, and I've always been attracted to NASW and was always interested in finding out

how I could find my way in, and it came through a position as a senior ethics associate. I took that position in 2002, and was then promoted to manager, and now serve as a director, but have been serving in that department since 2002. Long time, time really does fly. And I absolutely still love my job, you know, I still love coming to work. I think I have a very unique opportunity to hear firsthand around the world what issues social workers face around ethical practice. And I'm really passionate about helping social workers. When I went into the field, I had no idea that my work would be around supporting social workers. I thought I would work directly with clients.

However, the opportunity at NASW afforded me the opportunity to really work firsthand with social workers, and I love it. I love teaching. I love sharing my knowledge. I love providing guidance and just being there for the profession. So I still love my job. Dawn, you've already mentioned that you do consultations to members, but what are some of the common questions popping up? We get that question a lot, and I will tell you that even today the most common questions are around conflicts of interest. They don't always rise to the level of can I have a relationship with my client, but there are some things that are more subtle.

So I'm seeing a client, and the client's daughter is in my child's class. How do I manage those conflicts of interest? Or, yeah, I have a client who's attending my church. How do I manage that conflict of interest? Do I need to terminate services? So conflicts of interest and boundary issues are probably still the most common dilemmas that social workers face, and I think that's becoming more challenging with the use of technology. one of the common questions that are coming up as it relates to technology

are around the ability to provide services to clients who are in other locations. And so we get common questions about I have a client who's moving out of the country or out of the state and they want to continue services using an audio-video conferencing format. And the code does not say that social workers cannot do that, but there are a lot of considerations. For example, the first response to that is that social workers need to ensure that their state licensing board, where they're licensed, as well as the licensing board, where they intend to practice, allows social workers to practice outside of their state. So that's a big piece of it. And then the Code of Ethics talks about

many other responsibilities in terms of competence and the use of the technology. Social workers need to have policies in place on how they'll address emergencies, And so if a client is visiting you face-to-face and they threaten to harm themselves, you can address that face-to-face and you know who to call locally, et cetera. But if your client is in another state and you're not there with them, how do you protect them? How do you address emergencies? How do you address the technology failing? You know, so providing services to clients outside of your location becomes more challenging,

although it's not something that's a violation of the code. You just have to figure out how to do it ethically. So how do I work with clients in other locations is common, as well as, again, the good old conflicts of interest. Thank you. Well, it's really been a pleasure having you, and we hope to also have you back soon. I'll be more than happy to come back. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. you have been listening to nasw social work talks a production of the national association of social workers we encourage you to visit nasw's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social work policies you can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. We also invite you to join us for the 2018 NASW National Conference, which runs June 20th through the 23rd in Washington, D.C. You'll have an opportunity

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