2010 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Conclusion: Practising Values in Social Work
Social workers face especially hard moral choices. They are often caught between a rock and a hard place. There are situations in which, whatever they do, moral blame and guilt will result. Thus it seems that moral goodness is not always within the grasp of social workers. The problem of what is called moral ‘dirty hands’ always looms as a possibility with the realities of front-line practice. ‘Dirty hands’ are said to result when a social worker encounters a conflict of duties or values and must choose between alternatives, none of which is entirely satisfactory. In such cases social workers find themselves in situations where they can be morally sullied by doing what is morally permissible or even obligatory. There are some situations where social workers experience moral guilt or regret for doing the right thing. A social worker who is complicit in having an older person admitted to a residential nursing home because she is at risk of falling but knows that institutional life will inevitably hasten her dementia is one possible case of moral dirty hands. Under such difficult circumstances you often hear people gingerly remark that ‘it was for the best’. In social work moral dilemmas are genuine even when the right solution is clear. The question of how a social worker is to act in the public good when circumstances are not ideal for its realization is a very common problem.