Lessons are for students who are working and interested in social work. 

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Ethics.

At the end of this lesson there is an exercise that you can use as a warm-up.

Ethics >> conflict of interest (duel) in which differences in values and norms play a role (your conscience).
Differences in values and standards between:
you and the client, you and the institution, you and your colleagues.

Roadmap ethical dilemmas:
- What are the facts.
- List alternative actions (do not judge).
- What values and interests are at stake.
- How important each interest is.
- Make a decision based on the criteria:
~ Human dignity.
~ Equal treatment.
~ What you don't want to happen....

Important:
Follow a step-by-step plan and realise that you cannot make a decision in all situations but should leave this to other disciplines such as pedagogue, remedial educationalist, psychiatrist, child protection board, children's judge, parents or other legal representatives. Do you think that you can or should take responsibility for making a decision on a certain subject.


Which ethical or other difficult questions can you be confronted with, such as SW?
- Relationships with staff (e.g. in the group).
- Relationships clients have with each other.
- Clients with staff.
- Husband / wife. Woman/woman. Man / man.
- In love, engaged, living together or getting married.
- Making love at a living group
- Contraceptives or no contraceptives.
- Which contraceptives (e.g. injections, pill).
- Abortion.
- Masturbation.
- Church attendance and everything that can go with it. such as communion, confession, baptism.
- Vaccinations e.g. against smallpox.
- Euthanasia.


Careful handling of ethical questions and dilemmas.
If in ethical dilemmas there is neither a legal framework nor a protocol available, you will eventually have to make a choice. Of course, your goal is to act carefully. However, the problem is that it is unclear what careful action means in this situation. People have different opinions about this. Let's first of all state that people may also have different opinions about this: after all, people have different values and standards. At the same time, however, you are faced with the problem of having to make a choice. What do you choose? Do you do something or not? Do you solve something this way or another?
To assess an ethical dilemma it is best to use a step-by-step plan. It can help you determine your point of view. The step-by-step plan helps you to look at and assess the ethical problem from all angles.
The step-by-step plan contains the following steps.
Step 1: What are the facts?
This step is all about charting the facts as objectively as possible and striving to explore the situation as fully as possible. This step is not yet about making a judgement. On the contrary: this step is about pure facts. Ultimately, the dilemma can then be briefly described. It must be clearly stated for whom it is a dilemma.
Step 2: What alternative actions are there? What considerations play a role?
This step is about describing what you could do in this situation and looking for motives for each alternative: why do you do things one way or another? Again, this step is not about forming an opinion, but about listing possibilities and motives.
Step 3: What values and interests are at stake?
This step is, as it were, a preparation for forming a judgement. You describe which values are at stake in this situation. Examples of values that may play a role are: honesty, loyalty, independence, love, trust, and so on.
Step 4: How important is each interest?
This step is closely related to the previous one. After all, it is not enough just to describe which values play a role. You will also have to determine how important each value is to you.
Step 5: Decide and test
This step is about making a decision based on all the information you collected in the previous steps.
You can test the decision you think you will make against the criteria. On the basis of these criteria you can 'test' whether the decision is morally correct.
Criteria are:
- the decision may not be contrary to human dignity (respect for life);
- the decision may not result in unequal treatment of equal people in equal circumstances;
- we must be able to accept the decision for ourselves. In other words: 'What you do not want to happen to you, do not do to another'.



Warm up.

- You're the director of a hospital and chairman of the meeting.
Situation is this:
Only two people can get heart surgery while more patients
are in the ward for whom surgery is necessary.
Briefly explain the situation and make sure that you reach a responsible decision.
Patients who are not being operated on will have to be informed about this.
are [arguments to be given].

These are the persons to be operated on:

- The professor (68 years old), he means a lot to medicine.

- The drug addict single mother (23 years) she has a daughter (2 years)

- The burglar (59 years old), married with children 16 and 19 years old.

- Woman (39 years) with a mental handicap.

- Director (45 years), runs a company of 500 people.

- A school teacher (26 years), she is the only teacher in the village.

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