Moral Philosophy Meets Social Work: Commentary on Alan Gewirth’s “Confidentiality in Child‐Welfare Practice”

Abstract

In recent years, social workers have become increasingly aware of ethical dilemmas in practice. Beginning especially in the mid-to-late 1970s, social work’s literature has included a steady stream of reflections on difficult moral choices involving conflicts among professional duties and obligations (Loewnberg and Dolgoff 1996; Congress 1998; Reamer 1998, 1999). To what extent do clients have the right to engage in self-harming behavior without interference? How should social workers allocate scarce or limited resources such as emergency services, shelter beds, funds, and even their own time? Is it ethically permissible for social workers to violate laws and regulations they believe to be unjust? Ethical choices involving confidentiality—in particular, conflicts between clients’ prima facie right to confidentiality and social workers’ duty to protect others, and sometimes clients themselves, from harm—exemplify the hard moral decisions that social workers now recognize as an inevitable component of practice. Social workers in a wide variety of practice settings are all too familiar with these exceedingly challenging judgments (Dickson 1998). Under what circumstances are social workers obligated to override a client’s wishes and share confidential information with an individual the client has threatened to harm? How should a social worker respond to a court order to disclose privileged information that the client does not want shared in open court? Does a minor have a right to expect a social worker to withhold