NASW Social Work Talks - EP72: 2021 Revisions to the NASW Code of Ethics

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

We speak with Dawn M. Hobdy, LICSW, NASW's Vice President, Ethics, Diversity and Inclusion, about the 2021 updates to the NASW Code of Ethics. The 2021 update includes language that addresses the importance of professional self-care. Moreover, revisions to Cultural Competence standard provide more explicit guidance to social workers. All social workers should review the new text and affirm their commitment to abide by the Code of Ethics. Visit the show notes for resources.

Welcome to Social Work Talks. I'm Greg Wright. The NASW Code of Ethics has defined the values and principles that guide the social work profession for more than 60 years. The NASW Code of Ethics webpage has been visited more than 3 million times in the past five years. The Code of Ethics has changed over time to reflect changes in our society and the social work profession. Today, we are talking to Dawn Hobby, NASW's Vice President of Ethics, Diversity, and Inclusion about the latest changes. Welcome to Social Work Talks, Dawn. How are you? Oh, I'm great. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. Our Code of Ethics is over 60 or so years old now. How many times has it been

changed or updated over all these decades? I think we're on about our seventh or eighth some form of revision to the code. Who actually decides when these changes are made, Dawn? The Code of Ethics is a living, breathing document. It is intended to change and grow as the profession grows and as society grows. And so we actually have a responsibility to ensure that 10 years from now, our code doesn't look the way that it did when we started. In our first version of the Code of Ethics, it was a one-page document with about 14 or 15 one-line statements in first person, such as, I will respect the privacy and confidentiality of my clients. Again, a one-page document. Today, the Code of Ethics is a 30-page document with

172 standards. If that doesn't reflect growth, I don't know what does. And how do these changes occur? How do we go from a one-page document to a 30-page document? Well, it is the responsibility responsibility of the social work profession to understand the code of ethics, to view the code of ethics, and to point out when we've outgrown it or when there's room for improvement. And so the way that that happens is that any member of NASW can submit a request for us to look at a specific piece of the code of ethics. That request goes through a process by which the delegate assembly of NASW will review those changes and decide whether or not to put it on the agenda. And then there's a period where the public will have an opportunity to give their feedback about

the proposed changes. That goes on the delegate assembly's agenda. And then we vote about those changes. It's a really, you know, great democratic process. And it is really important that we hear from the social workers who are responsible for implementing the standards in this code and adhering to the code, that they really understand it and that it gives them the guidance that they need to practice ethically. So that's pretty much how it's evolved and how those changes take place. Thank you. Now, we have a new version out now. How long has that been out, Dawn? That's a brand new occurrence. So the Delegate Assembly, during its original meeting at the end of last year approved a change to the code. And we made one additional change just very recently.

So the new code of ethics. So when I say hot off the press, I mean, this is a brand new development. And, you know, we'll have a chance to go into what was included in this new code in just a minute. There's been a change in a term in it. So we have a term, which was a cultural awareness one, it was actually changed back over to a cultural competence. So it went from a cultural competence to awareness back to cultural competence. And I was wondering why. Yeah, thank you for that. And so this is another great example of the fact, one, that we do have a responsibility to continue to develop as professionals and that that's reflected in our Code. And so with the last revision of the Code of Ethics, I think in 2017, we have a committee

called the National Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity. We call them NCORID that have a responsibility to look at NASW to make sure that we are being responsive to racial and ethnic diversity. The recommendation to change the Code of Ethics Standard 1.05 from cultural awareness back to cultural competence was a recommendation from this committee. And the thought behind the change was, and let me go back to why it was changed to cultural awareness. As you stated, the standard was originally cultural competence, and it was changed to cultural awareness. And that really came out of a task force that was developed to look at the full code of ethics and make recommendations, and out of that task force work, they actually revised 70 standards in the code,

But those related mostly to technology. But there was a review of the cultural standard. And the discussion was that awareness is the new language that's being used by professionals. And it reflects the fact that understanding culture is an ongoing thing and that we may never be completely competent in culture, but that we had a responsibility to be aware. And so I think it was done with good intentions. However, the NCORA committee and others wanted us to look at that again. And the thought was that cultural awareness is not enough. We have a real responsibility to be competent.

And I really appreciated some of the feedback that we received, such as, you know, if you're an aging specialist and you're working in gerontology, you're not expected to be aware of the aging process. You're expected to be competent in the aging process. If you're working in a child welfare system, we don't require that social workers are aware of the skills and knowledge needed to practice in child welfare. They're expected to be competent. Also, cultural awareness and cultural humility, another term that was being considered, those are part of cultural competence. And so I really appreciate the language that we landed on. For example, 1.05, letter B, it says that social workers, the new language states that social workers should demonstrate knowledge that guides practice with clients of various cultures and be able to demonstrate skills and the provision of culturally informed services that empower marginalized individuals and groups. Social workers must take action against oppression, racism, discrimination, and inequities and

acknowledge personal privilege. And it's going to go a little further so you can get a sense of how this language has evolved. In letter C of that same standard, it states that social workers should demonstrate awareness and cultural humility by engaging in critical self-reflection, understanding their own bias, and engaging in self-correction, recognizing clients as experts of their own culture, committing to lifelong learning, and holding institutions accountable for advancing cultural humility. This growth in language is about growth in the profession, about our growth and understanding about what real cultural competence is and what's required of the profession if we

are really going to be able to effectively serve our diverse communities. I'm really proud of the efforts that was made and the conversation that took place and where we landed on this language, because it shows our commitment to continuously grow and develop in our competence and culture and in every other realm of social work. Don, do you think that it was a coincidence that this new language came in while our nation is really wrestling with some difficult like issues about racism? I love that question. I actually think it's divine. You know, I really have a strong belief that things just happen the way and when they should. You know, this conversation came up probably two years ago. And when this all

came together, it's just divine timing. It's absolutely timely. And I think if it had been revised and approved probably a year ago, it wouldn't have the same impact that it's going to have once that new language gets out. It's just, I really just believe that it's just timely. But it wasn't intentional. You know, it wasn't intentional for us to hold this. It wasn't intentional that the Delegate Assembly was held when it was. Like many other things we found in 2020, things just happen the way that we should. And when I talk about the other language that was changing the code. That'll be another example of how these things are just coming together at the right time. There is a new section now on self-care. I'm really glad that our code now has

language on this issue. And I was wondering why was that added in? Everything that you see in the Code of Ethics should reflect the growth of the profession. And this is a reflection of that, the understanding of not only self-care being important, but it's not a luxury. It's actually something that's going to be required if we are to continue to provide the best services for our clients. And so there were members of the association who questioned us, why isn't self-care in the code of ethics? And we paid attention to those questions and we had to answer them for ourselves and for the profession. And we found out that it wasn't satisfactory, that there wasn't enough language that did many things, explained self-care and why it was important and also

gave permission for social workers to care for themselves. And that's important. Some of the feedback that we received in the past is that many professionals felt through the code of ethics and through standards and policies and procedures that there wasn't permission for them to think about and care for themselves. And that was really problematic. And I had to agree with that. I mean, And I look at our original code of ethics. There was actually a standard there that said, I give precedence to my professional responsibilities over my personal interests. And I know that there were good intentions by that standard. However, it implied to the social work profession that we needed to take care of our clients before and as opposed to taking care of ourselves. And that's been the message for a long time. So adding language to the code of ethics was extremely important to, one, reflect the fact that you do have permission to care for yourself, but more so the understanding that it is a requirement.

If you can't care for yourself, you can't continue to care for your clients. COVID-19 really showed us how important that was. not that it was the first time that we understood that, but it definitely solidified the idea that self-care was really important. One of the challenges with adding self-care to the code was we didn't want to create a standard in the code of ethics around self-care that would hold social workers accountable in how they practice self-care. We didn't want a standard where a client or someone could say, this social worker is not practicing self-care according to the code of ethics, so now I want to file a complaint against them. That was a concern,

and it could be used against them. So where it was added were in places such as the purpose of the code, and there we talked about an understanding that self-care is paramount for competent and ethical social work practice. That language goes on to say that professional demands, challenging workplace climates, exposure to trauma. All of these things warrant that social workers maintain personal and professional health, safety, and integrity. We went on to add language in our value of integrity, where the principle is that social workers behave in a trustworthy manner. And we added language that says that social workers should take measures to care for themselves professionally and personally. That has never been the code before, but it's so

important. And one last thing that was added that's extremely important is we thought it was really important to add language that supports the social workers and their need for support by their organizations, agencies, etc. And so the language includes a statement that says that there's importance of the social work organizations, agencies, and educational institutions to promote organizational policies practices and materials to support social work self-care so it's not only on the social workers but it is on social work employers educators etc to promote and to support social work self-care it's important our code um it does not specify what form that this self-care takes. That's right. It's up to, okay, all right. I just wanted to make that clear.

Adding the language was just a first step because there is going to be a need to really educate and have conversations about what self-care looks like because on the one hand, you can't have this list of what's acceptable self-care, but we do want to make sure that we're responsible about the promotion of self-care, what that looks like, as opposed to something that might be harmful but enjoyable to someone. So the code of ethics is a guidance, and it's not going to be that descriptive. I do think that is going to be the responsibility of NASW to educate and to have more conversations about what self-care, what healthy self-care looks like. And one of the ways that that will happen is NASW provides ethics consultations to its member. It's one of our

most valued services, any member, any current member of NASW can contact the Office of Ethics and Professional Review Monday through Thursday. And the actual contact number and hours are located on our webpage at www.socialworkers.org backslash ethics. If you go there, you'll see ethics consultations. And the goal of that is to allow social workers a confidential peer consultation process where they can ask questions about the limits they're facing and then what we do is guide them through the standards of the code that relate to their question and then also offer what other considerations they might need to make so that they can make the best decisions for themselves we

don't tell them what to do we don't give advice but we just guide them through the code and then again help them think through other things that they can make the best decisions. We still provide an average of 10 to 15 calls Monday through Thursday each day. So it's a very active part of the work we do. And Greg, it's also a place where we're starting to get a lot of questions about self-care and cultural competence. So again, this language being added to the code at this time is just great timing. Dawn, I was wondering if you could give us some examples that you are getting from social workers. Sure. So, again, you know, they are confidential, so I wouldn't give an exact question.

But the types of questions that we get around self-care are really they've really increased through COVID. And so one of the kind of a heartbreaking and I don't know, whenever I hear this question, it gets to me because I understand the challenges that social workers face. But one of the most common questions we get is, how do I protect myself and my family and still provide the best service for my client? For example, if I work in an environment where there's no option to see a client using technology. So, you know, telehealth was a big thing at the beginning of COVID and still is. So people were able to telework and see their clients through video conferencing, et cetera. But some social workers did not have that option for many reasons. Either the agency didn't offer it or the clients didn't have access. And so they had to grapple with, do I go in and see my client who needs the service in person and possibly affect myself and or bring that back to my family? how do I protect myself and my family and still provide the best service to my client who might

be in need? And that was really challenging. Again, one, because we can't tell social workers what to do, but I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm a sister, I'm a daughter. I understand how challenging that might be. So that was a very complicated consultation to provide. And, you know, we basically had to remind them to, it's going to be a case by case basis. You're going to have to evaluate the risk associated with this, the benefits, evaluate all of your different options, do some supervision. You know, one of the things we try to share with social workers is that you don't have to make these decisions on your own. Seek out supervision and also seek out peer consultation. Talk to other social workers in this same type of situation to find out what they're

doing that has worked and then find out what's the standard of practice, what's been helpful, what's been effective and what's been efficient, but it's going to be unique to each social worker. But that's a challenging thing to try to address during something like COVID, where it's just scary and unprecedented, and we didn't know what it meant for each of us to be exposed to this virus. A social worker, I mean, if they weigh all of the like options and they think that it's not like a safe thing for them to actually visit a client, they shouldn't feel at all um like uh a guilty party right uh for saying that's right no i don't want to do this that's right that's right yeah so that's about you know on some level that self-care that you have permission to care for yourself in social work right and so you also have a

responsibility to um put your client's interest primary but you can do those together you can take care of yourself and consider yourself and consider your client the other thing is when you think about the client, the client's best interest, if you're seeing a client and you're hesitant or you're nervous or you're, you know, you're, you're, you're not sure about the environment, you're not going to provide the best care anyway. So thinking about yourself and setting up the best scenario for yourself and for your client is a way of providing the best service to your client. And you need to be comfortable with that and understanding that two social workers might make a different decision and they can both be ethical yeah it's you know something don ethics

is it's such a um a delicate and it's like a lot of finesse to it absolutely it's most of ethics lives in the gray i mean there's some some ethics questions that are ethical dilemmas that are black and white you know the famous one or infamous can i sleep with my client that's a no you know That's a black or white. No, you know, but most of the most challenging and most important ethical issues or dilemmas are about having to make a choice between two very difficult decisions. Right. And there's a lot of gray. There's a lot of different ways that you can respond. So, yeah, it's absolutely challenging. It requires a lot of thought. We are dealing with the aftermath of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and a lot of a lot of others. I was wondering, are you getting a lot more questions on racism?

We haven't been bombarded with those questions, but we do have them. And what we usually hear, which makes me kind of proud again of the social profession, because we're really doing some self-reflection in terms of being anti-racist social workers. So I do get questions about how do I manage work with my clients when I realize that I have some unconscious biases or some unconscious biases have become conscious and I'm trying to figure out how to best serve diverse clients. How do I get through working through the unconscious biases and still provide services to my clients? We also have questions about what do I do if I find out that my client is a racist, right, or that I discover, again, that I have some unconscious bias or some racist ways of thinking through the work I do with my clients. So those have been real questions that we've received. And this is the first time I've ever heard these kind of questions. So the good thing, again, is that this time that we're in is forcing us to really look at ourselves and that social workers are trying to, they're being honest about that introspection and trying to figure out how to do better.

How does like ethics help them out? Well, it's a good place to start because, you know, I'm also often surprised by how many social workers have never read their full code of ethics and or don't understand it. And so there are social workers who think that race and social justice are not even part of the code or politics is not part of ethics. And so I start by reminding social workers that you need to reread your code of ethics. You need to understand the principles and values of our code, our commitment to clients and social justice. It's actually one of our principles that you have to understand your code of ethics. And then if once you do that, one, you have to you have to do some soul searching. You have to ask yourself, am I a part of the right profession?

You know, these things were brought to my attention. I didn't know that this was expected. Am I part of the right profession? If you decide you want to still be a part of this profession, but you realize that you have some, you've contributed to racism or white supremacy in America, and it affected your clients, then you have to start doing the work. You have to educate yourself. You have to do counsel. And that's not an ethic consult, but it's doing consultation with experts in anti-racism,

doing your own work, reaching out to peers, recognizing your unconscious biases. There's a long process sitting with yourself and recognizing the contribution that you've made, the harm that you may have caused to different communities, and then do the work, make the change, be the change that you want to see, walk the walk. You know, it's one thing to read a book and say, you know, I think there might be something there, but it's what are you going to do about it? And how far are you willing to go? this means do you need to pause with your clients with the work that you're doing until you can advance yourself in this work um what is the need what is going to be the action uh so it's it's a very complicated it's not complicated but it requires real work real digging real rolling up your sleeves um in order to impact positive change you know you can again you can you can talk the

taught, but if you're going to walk the walk, it takes real work. I think about just the experience of my white colleagues in this space, some of them who, you know, came into this society by what their great-grandfathers taught them, their grandfathers and grandmothers taught them, and, you know, they just came into this world with these ideas, these biases against people who don't look like them, and maybe not have recognized how it's impacted the way they work with their clients and now being confronted with this, I'm sure it's not as easy as saying, oh, I recognize this is wrong. Let me stop doing that. I wish it was. And sometimes I want to just say, I wish everyone would just stop it, right? Just treat people well, be respectful, honor people, honor

humanity, and let's get this right. I would love to say that because this work is really hard, but it's just not that simple. I think people have to commit to finding out who they are in this space, and then figuring out who they want to be, and then doing that work. And that can begin with an ethics consultation, but it goes way beyond that. We are planning a webinar for the profession around these changes, and that will be a free ethics webinar on these changes to the code. And we will offer CEs for a fee, a lower fee for members, of course. So I hope that you all will be able to join us and we'll have further discussions about these changes. So thank you again for inviting me. I want to thank you for being a guest here on Social Work Talks. Thank

you so much. Bye-bye now. Okay, bye-bye. 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 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. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.