Ethical Responsibilities of Human Services Discussion
Ethical Responsibilities of Human Services Discussion
Professional women and men in a meeting room.This module has dealt mostly with ethical frameworks as they apply to each human service professional, yet social work (and by implication, human services) as a profession may have a responsibility to society as a whole as well. Some possible social responsibilities of the profession may be:
to guarantee high quality services through education, certification, and licensure
to meet legal requirements (the legal stance)
to assure justice for all people, especially those who are unable to speak for themselves
to empower the powerless through teaching them to use the scientific methods of the modern world. (the radical social work stance)
to respect diversity by developing inclusive ethical standards based on consensus with client groups (the postmodern stance)
to serve individual clients using the latest helping techniques without concern for the broader society (the technical approach)
to maintain or manage pain and suffering in the most cost effective manner possible (the neoliberal stance)
to please the consumer (the business stance)
to please the funding and regulatory agencies (the bureaucratic stance)
Imagine that you are on the Board of Directors of a professional organization charged with developing a statement regarding the social responsibilities of the profession. Take one of these positions (or another that you have uncovered in your reading) and argue for making it the central focus of the profession’s social responsibility. Be sure to cite arguments from your readings and research outside of the course. Convince us all of the “rightness” of your position.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.