Michael Horne - Values in Social Work

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VALUES IN SOCIAL WORK

To Liz, Megan and Cerian

Values in Social Work

Second Edition

Michael Horne

First published 1999 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Michael Horne 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 99041124

Typeset by Manton Typesetters, Louth, Lincolnshire, UK

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-35990-1 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-429-43342-9 (ebk)

Contents

Guide

This second edition of Values in Social Work consists of and develops the examination of the underlying values that inform and guide social work practice - particularly focusing on 'respect for persons' and 'client self-determination' - that was begun in the first edition.

Social work is a complex activity. As a profession it purports to be guided by a code of ethics, established by its professional body/association, which encompasses a set of 'commonly' held, liberal, humanitarian beliefs. These beliefs, in the form of a code of ethics, are intended to guide the nature of the relationship between the social worker and client/user, to 'protect' the client whilst reminding the social worker of her 'societal' responsibilities. These expectations of social workers are both complex and far from unambiguous. At the very least they raise important questions regarding possible conflicts of interests that the social worker may be faced with. In order to understand this situation, one is immediately thrown into examining the nature, role and task of social work in society.

Identifying and explaining the role of values in social work, that is, in actual practice, is an area of study which has not received the attention that it deserves, either in terms of research, theorising or teaching. Traditionally, 'theorizing' has tended either to examine social work values within the too narrow parameters of the client/social worker relationship, largely ignoring the social forces that brought them together; or, at the other end of the spectrum, to identify only the structural dimensions of social work in society, ignoring the dynamics and effect of this on the actual role and relationship between the social worker and client.

I attempted to address this situation in the first edition of Values in Social Work. This revised second edition takes this examination further by developing a closer examination of both the processes by which society identifies certain people and groups as 'worthy' of social work attention, and the ways in which the values of social work are actually used in both confirming certain people as 'clients', or as being part of a process in which these 'clientizing' processes can potentially be challenged.

In the preface to the first edition of Values in Social Work, I identified the main emphasis of the book as seeking to understand values in social work primarily from the perspective of local authority-based social work practice. There were two principal reasons for this.

First, my own social work practice (residential and field-based) continually generated questions related to values in social work: for example, why the idea of client self-determination does not always seem to be very prominent (if recognisable at all) in practice. Philosophically-based texts told me a great deal about the concept of self-determination, but little or nothing about its relevance and place in actual social work practice.

Second, and closely related to the first reason, is the need to examine practice, to understand what the social workers do, and why they do it. As a social worker, what I did often did not seem to be in accord with the textbooks (perhaps a reflection on my practice as much as a comment on the textbooks). The 'reality' often was much more complex, with more variables, possibilities and restrictions. Put together, these two reasons explain why I saw a need for and engaged in a study of values in social work from a 'practice'-based perspective. This perspective maintains its central position in this second edition.

The overall aim of this book is to present a 'critical' (and perhaps in places, 'provocative') perspective on social work values that hopefully will encourage in the reader their own examination of social work values.

Finally, it is hoped that this second edition of Values in Social Work comprises a useful addition to a much welcome growing body of literature on social work values.

Michael Horne
University of York, January 1999

I would first like to thank the social workers who kindly and bravely agreed to be interviewed, for both the first edition and this second edition of Values in Social Work. Their contribution plays a central part in this book, in terms of the case material presented, and for the insights into social work practice that they have shared with me. I would also like to express my continuing gratitude to Martin Davies and David Howe for the support and encouragement that they gave me whilst I was a student at the University of East Anglia, beginning my interest in social work values.

Thanks are also due to the many colleagues and social work students who have listened to and challenged my thinking over the years.

Social work is a professional activity. Implicit in its practice are ethical principles which prescribe the professional responsibility of the social worker. The primary objective of the code of ethics is to make these implicit principles explicit for the protection of clients and other members of society. (BASW 1996, para. 1)

Competence in social work requires the understanding and integration of the values of social work. (CCETSW 1989, p. 15)

Ethical issues are at the heart of a discipline such as social work. (Hugman and Smith 1995, p. 1)

Social workers regularly confront practice dilemmas: the necessity to take difficult decisions, in which there are no right answers, based on a delicate assessment of risk and competing (if not conflicting) rights: and a myriad of pressures, including from within. The result is a complex maze and interaction of personal, professional, interagency and societal dynamics and pressures and potential tangles between service users, social workers, agencies and society. (Preston-Shoot and Agass 1900, p. 10)

Social work as a valueladen activity

There are a number of different ways in which values and ethics have been written about and identified as central to social work, as the quotes above suggest. This centrality is evidenced in the development of a professional code of ethics for social workers by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), which identifies the nature of the responsibilities of social workers. This in turn is supported by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) through the identification of the significance and need to integrate the values that underpin social work in the education and training of social workers at both qualifying and post-qualifying levels.

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