How to be 'ethical in an unethical world': advice for social workers

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 16 November 2022

Social workers need better protection from the moral distress of trying to be ethical in “an unethical world”.

That was the message from a session on Ethics, Principles and Moral Injury at the BASW England conference.

Professor Sarah Banks, co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University, examined how ethics impacts on social work.

She said: “Practicing ethically in an unethical world is what social workers do all the time. In fact it's what social workers have always done.

“But it is important that we continue in social work and feel there is hope for the future.”

Drawing on research she carried out with the International Federation of Social Workers, Prof Banks pointed to the ethical challenges currently facing social workers.

"We operate in a world of deep inequalities and unfairness, untruth and violence, things that social workers encounter every day. Political tragedy causes an economic and social double tragedy.

“We see self-interest, meanness and grandiosity, and are facing the impacts of pandemic, climate change, food poverty and war."

Social work therefore occupies what Prof Banks describes as a 'dilemmatic space' - a space built on contradictions where there is no obvious right action.

"It is a space where you are facing dilemmas and the dilemmas are intractable choices where whatever you do will have outcomes."

According to Prof Banks this can lead to:

• ethical overload - being faced with too many choices
• ethical confusion - in not knowing the right action to take
• ethical stress - anxiety about making the right decision
• moral distress - feeling negative emotions about being unable to do the right thing
• moral injury - damage to the moral self by actions that violate core moral beliefs, resulting in guilt, shame and hopelessness.

But it is possible to foster positive responses to challenges and there are also opportunities for ethical learning, said Prof Banks.

"During the pandemic we saw a lot of people reflecting on what had been done and how things could be made better for the future.

"It's not just individually that social workers can make a change but collectively and together you can push at some of those structures of inequality and unfairness.

"It's about critically examining the changed and changing context, seeing the bigger picture in terms of what's going on, what matters.

"The balance is about when to take a risk and push boundaries to support people and when to protect yourself and your family and conserve energy.”

Speaking about the greater role employers need to play in assisting social workers, she added: "Employers need to take responsibility for caring for employees, and a big role that BASW plays is how to reduce bureaucracy. If you have to decide on every minute thing you end up with moral confusion.”

Fiona Tharme, a social work service leader in Leeds working across ten teams, added her reflections on moral injury, saying: “The core values of social work for me are about social justice, right and wrong, equity, and fairness.

“The difficulties faced by children and their families, and the deliberate abuse of children challenge these core values, and therefore impact upon our worldview, our resilience and  have the potential to cause moral injury.

“Providing and receiving reflective supervision, space to process experiences and regular access to peer and management support can never be underestimated in social work.”

Lori Goossen, principal children and families social worker for Medway Council, said it was not realistic to think practitioners aren’t affected by being exposed to loss, trauma, abuse and crisis on a daily basis.

“It is an occupational hazard of this kind of work. I've been a social worker for 28 years. Stories of trauma and loss and abuse can accumulate over time.

“The number one thing that is going to help is getting it out in the open. I recall being called into my manager's office one day, asking why I couldn't cope.

“I had just done my first care proceeding and had taken away a ten-day-old baby from his parents - eventually he was placed up for adoption.

“That was both secondary trauma and moral injury. I was doing something I really didn’t feel was right. And the fact that I removed this child from their parents at ten days old really traumatised me.

“But I had a great manager at the time. He was very good. He had worked with a lot of AIDS patients and had lost a lot of both friends and clients, and he was really empathetic. And he just let me talk.”