Introduction

As part of Part Two, this chapter focuses on dynamics of personal and professional ethics (see Figure 1.1). It considers the moral challenges to social workers and focuses on the role of the child protection social worker in particular. The authors take a moral philosophy and virtue ethics approach to highlight the importance of the concept of ‘role’ as the basis of a morally adequate and readily applicable response to these challenges. They draw upon a case study to highlight the moral and ethical dilemmas that the lead author faced in her own practice – challenges that are representative of the difficulties faced by other professional child protection workers.

The authors acknowledge the influence of Mayo's conceptualisation of the moral agent (Mayo, 1968) in laying out what they consider to be the moral and, more broadly, the philosophical dimensions of ‘role’, and in linking this to the philosophy of mind and in this respect to the structuring of self-consciousness. Mayo reminds us of the need to regard the differences between virtue and rule or principle related ethical approaches as being in large part a question of emphasis. His examination of the ethical dimensions of ‘role’ prompts the presentation of a few clearly interlinked but very basic questions of relevance to thorough moral reasoning in the shifting contexts of day-to-day practice. These questions might, with various modifications, be fashioned along the following lines: ‘In this situation what ought I to do as a practitioner?’ ‘In this situation what ought I to be as a practitioner, or as a professional person or more broadly still as a moral agent?’ Broadly then, the authors see the role of the social worker as encompassing the character of the individual and shaped by the ethical demands arising from practice and not merely confined to being seen as or being expected to be ‘implementers’ of technical and procedural aspects of tasks. Clark regards the ‘currently re-emerging emphasis on character as a partial reference back to the early concepts and ideals of personal social service that were lost sight of during the ascendancy of “competence” as the yardstick of professionalism’ (2006, p 87).