by Allan Barsky, JD, MSW, PhD
After I conduct ethics workshops with social employees round the US, I usually begin with the next query:
Assume {that a} difficult moral concern arises between you and a shopper. What methods would you employ that can assist you handle the difficulty?
The commonest response is reaching out for help. When confronted with moral points, social employees usually converse with their supervisors, peer consultants, NASW’s ethics session service, attorneys, legal responsibility insurance coverage suppliers, or others who will help them decide the easiest way to proceed. Different widespread responses embrace referring to the NASW Code of Ethics, company insurance policies, or regulatory legal guidelines, reminiscent of skilled licensing legal guidelines or legal guidelines that regulate explicit fields of apply. Some folks say they use an moral problem-solving mannequin that they realized of their BSW/MSW packages. All of those choices are legitimate and useful.
One response that I’ve by no means heard is have interaction the shopper in storytelling. After I elevate this risk, folks usually reply that they’ve by no means heard of storytelling as an method to managing moral points. As you learn this text, I hope you’ll take into consideration ways in which storytelling might be useful, not as an alternative choice to different methods, however as a way that you should utilize together with different methods (Brody & Clark, 2014).
What Is Narrative Ethics?
Narrative ethics is an method to exploring moral points by partaking folks in storytelling. Narrative ethics has the same theoretical basis as narrative remedy in that each are based mostly on social constructionism. In response to social constructionism, there is no such thing as a singular goal reality. Our identities, values, and perception methods are based mostly on the tales that we inform about ourselves. To place narrative ethics into apply, we will use expertise reminiscent of inviting storytelling, listening attentively to 1 one other, figuring out moral classes and ethical virtues that may be derived from the tales, and dealing collectively to co-construct the following steps of the story’s plot (Barsky, 2022). Tales assist us perceive each other’s morals and values, together with what every particular person deems to be moral or unethical. We will take what we study from each other’s tales and discover the way to transfer the story ahead in an moral method.
An Instance of Narrative Ethics
After I confer with myself as a social employee, completely different folks might have completely different interpretations of what meaning. To assist others perceive my skilled identification and worth system, I can share tales about what I really do in apply. I keep in mind, for instance, serving to a selected teenager, Ashton.[1] I met Ashton in a park the place he sat subsequent to a knapsack with all his possessions. As he shared his story, I realized that he had left dwelling eight months earlier as a result of his dad and mom had issues with alcohol. They have been usually violent whereas intoxicated. He ultimately determined that it was higher to stay on his personal, even when that meant residing on the road. He stated he used medicine to deal with emotions of despair and loneliness. He additionally shared that he engaged in intercourse commerce to earn cash to pay for medicine, meals, and different requirements.
As a street-outreach social employee, my job was to supply assist, to not choose, blame, or dictate what Ashton ought to do or the way to lead his life. We mentioned varied choices, together with the opportunity of going to a residential addictions therapy program. A residential program would provide him a protected place to remain, meals to eat, and a contemporary begin in life. Residential therapy packages are abstinence-based, which means that he would have to be drug free. He advised me very adamantly that he didn’t wish to cease utilizing medicine. He felt that medicine have been his solely solution to cope. After additional discussions, we agreed to make use of a hurt discount method. Somewhat than specializing in abstinence, we talked about methods to make use of medicine in a safer method (e.g., utilizing clear needles, injecting safely, and avoiding overdoses).
Some folks may hear this story and see me as an enabler. Somewhat than serving to the shopper, was I enabling him to proceed to make use of illicit medicine? And, if he continued to make use of medicine, would his well being and well-being proceed to spiral downward? As a social employee, nevertheless, I imagine within the moral rules of service, respect for the dignity and value of all folks, and human relationships. Initially, I provided providers that I believed may be most useful. When he rejected them, I knew that I wanted to begin with Ashton and his needs. I wanted to work with him as a accomplice. I wanted to take his social scenario into consideration and attempt to see issues from his perspective. Basically, I wanted to honor his self-determination, dignity, and value. These rules assist to outline who I’m as a social employee.
Relational and Situational
Narrative ethics is a relational and situational method to ethics. Whereas some ethics approaches recommend that we should always analyze moral points as if we’re goal third events (rational outsiders), the relational side of narrative ethics implies that ethics selections must be made within the context of human relationships. As a caring social employee, I’m not dispassionate concerning the folks I serve. I care about them (Wilks, 2005). I’m attentive and attentive to their wants. In lots of courtrooms throughout America, we see photographs of Woman Justice holding the scales of justice in her fingers and carrying a blindfold throughout her eyes. In response to this story, “Justice is blind.” As a social employee, nevertheless, I don’t put on a masks over my eyes. I attempt to see the entire particular person. I attempt to be attentive to the particular person as a novel particular person.
Whereas some ethics approaches recommend that we should always apply common guidelines or moral rules, narrative ethics notes that every scenario is exclusive (Barsky, 2019). What is nice or proper for one scenario might not be good or proper for one more. If I have been working with Ashton in a special context, my moral determination making could possibly be very completely different. At one other stage of my social work profession, I labored for the Kids’s Support Society and served purchasers referred from the felony courtroom. If Ashton had disclosed baby abuse to me on this scenario, I would definitely have been required by baby welfare legal guidelines and my code of ethics to report Ashton to baby safety providers. The scenario is completely different, nevertheless, when Ashton resides on the road and I’m serving him in my road outreach function. On this capability, I’m supposed to assist Ashton with primary wants, together with security and safety. If I stated that I used to be required to report his dad and mom to baby protecting providers and get him into foster care, he may refuse to work with me. If he refused to work with me, his well being and life could possibly be put in higher hazard. My moral duties rely, partly, on the function that I’m enjoying and the wants of my purchasers.
Once we trade tales and replicate on the underlying ethics, we might or might not attain settlement about probably the most moral path ahead. Nonetheless, listening to 1 one other’s tales offers us with alternatives to realize empathy (Halpern, 2018). As we share tales, we will validate one another’s beliefs, values, and experiences. As we develop mutual understanding, there may be higher alternative for us to work collectively and resolve moral points in a collaborative method.
Functions of Narrative Ethics
Storytelling is already integral to many features of social work apply. Once we conduct psychosocial assessments, we invite purchasers to share their tales:
What introduced you in at this time? When did these considerations begin? How have you ever tried to take care of these considerations to date? And what are your targets shifting ahead?
To use narrative ethics, we might attend particularly to ethical and moral components:
Please inform me about your loved ones and cultural background. What have been a number of the tales handed down out of your dad and mom or elders? What ethical classes have you ever realized from these tales?
When serving to purchasers develop targets and motion plans, we will additionally assist them construct on their core values and morals:
You talked about earlier that “household accountability” is a core worth. How can we make sure that this worth matches with the work that we’re doing right here?
We additionally use narrative ethics once we ask supervisors or others for assist. We don’t merely ask a supervisor, “Is it okay for me to interact with a shopper in a twin relationship?” We share the story, offering context and permitting for a holistic evaluation of the scenario. In a single scenario, I’d share that I stay in a small group the place everybody is aware of each other and it might be unimaginable to keep away from twin relationships. In one other scenario, I’d clarify that I work at a hospice that authorizes me to offer each particular person and group counseling to the identical purchasers. Though this example entails twin relationships, I may share tales that illuminate the rationale for my company’s coverage and the steps that we take to reduce the dangers. By sharing extra particulars of the story, we will be sure that our selections about the way to transfer the story ahead construct on the present context.
Working towards Narrative Ethics
One solution to apply narrative ethics is to start with your self. How do you determine as knowledgeable (as an illustration, as a social employee, counselor, advocate, or group organizer)? Write down a short story about an precise expertise on this function that means one thing necessary concerning who you might be as this skilled. What does this story say about your skilled identification, together with what values you maintain and what ethical qualities are necessary to you? What does this story say about the way you view folks and the way you view your function as an agent of change? We might have many various tales that shine lights on completely different features of our values and ethics. We don’t assume that one story tells every part about us. Nevertheless, every story might present necessary insights into who we’re as ethical skilled beings.
As social employees, we regularly say that you will need to have a excessive degree of self-awareness. With out essential self-awareness, we would unintentionally impose values, ethics, and biases on our purchasers. By reflecting first on our personal tales, we’re elevating consciousness about our social location, our worldview, and our ethics. We’re then in a greater place to hearken to the tales of the folks we serve.
In 2021, the Nationwide Affiliation of Social Employees (2021) added the idea of cultural humility to Commonplace 1.05 of the NASW Code of Ethics. Cultural humility means that we should always deal with purchasers as consultants in their very own lives. One solution to put cultural humility into apply is partaking purchasers in storytelling, listening with an open thoughts and an open coronary heart, and striving to realize a greater understanding of their cultural attributes, together with their values and ethics. As we work by way of moral points with our purchasers, we will proceed the storying course of, setting up a future that takes every of the related particular person’s values, ethics, and morals into consideration.
References
Barsky, A. E. (2022). Important ethics for social work apply. Oxford College Press.
Barsky, A. E. (2019). Narrative ethics in social work apply. In S. Marson and McKinney, R. (Eds.). The Routledge handbook of social work ethics and values (Chapter 8). Routledge.
Brody, H., & Clark, M. (2014). Narrative ethics: A story. Hastings Heart Report, 44(1): S7–11.
Halpern, F. (2018). Closeness by way of unreliability: Sympathy, empathy, and ethics in narrative communication. Narrative, 26(2), 125-145.
Nationwide Affiliation of Social Employees. (2021). Code of Ethics. Writer.
Wilks, T. (2005). Social work and narrative ethics. British Journal of Social Work, 35, 1249–1264.
Allan Barsky, PhD, JD, MSW, is Professor of Social Work at Florida Atlantic College and creator of Social Work Values and Ethics (Oxford College Press).
The views expressed on this article don’t essentially characterize the views of any of the organizations to which the creator is affiliated, or the views of The New Social Employee journal or White Hat Communications.
[1] To guard shopper privateness, this identify is just not the youth’s precise identify.
