Donna Anne McAuliffe

Email-facilitated qualitative interviews with traumatic brain injury survivors: A new and accessible method

Primary objective: To trial the method of email-facilitated qualitative interviewing with people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Research design: Qualitative semi-structured email-facilitated interviews. Procedures: Nineteen people (17 severe diagnosis) with a TBI participated in email interviews. Main outcomes and results: Findings indicate that this method facilitates the participation of people with TBI in qualitative interviews. Advantages include increased time for reflection, composing answers and greater control of the interview setting. In addition, the data indicates that people with a TBI are capable of greater insight, reflection and humour than indicated by previous research. Conclusion: Findings indicate that new technologies may advance data collection methods for people with cognitive-linguistic impairments who face participation barriers in face-to-face interviews.

‘Who Do I Tell?’ Support and Consultation in Cases of Ethical Conflict

• Summary: Social workers cannot avoid ethical dilemmas. This qualitative research investigated the question ‘who do I tell?’, exploring who the people are that social workers approach for advice when a course of action is ethically uncertain. Thirty Australian social workers discussed how they managed a serious ethical dilemma, whether they sought support, and reasons for not seeking support. • Findings: All respondents had access to supervision, and regarded supervision as critical. However, less than half discussed the incident in organizational supervision, and supervision was more likely to be used if external to the organization. In many cases, ethical dilemmas were discussed with colleagues, and to a lesser extent with friends or family. Respondents referred to ethical, practical, organizational, and relationship reasons for not using potential sources of support. Typical issues were: availability; the perceived ethical priorities of the supervisor; the benefits and costs of seeking or not seeking support; behaviour of colleagues, managers or supervisors as the problem at issue; the ethics of discussing work with family and friends. • Applications: The study provides empirical data about support for social workers facing an ethical dilemma. Organizational supervision, ostensibly functioning to ensure standards and ethical practice, appeared the least satisfactory in doing so in critical situations. If relationships are not prioritized, no amount of monitoring of service outputs will create effective practice.

Leave No Stone Unturned: The Inclusive Model of Ethical Decision Making

Ethical decision making is a core part of the work of social work and human service practitioners, who confront with regularity dilemmas of duty of care; confidentiality, privacy and disclosure; choice and autonomy; and distribution of increasingly scarce resources. This article details the development and application of the Inclusive Model of Ethical Decision Making, created in response to growing awareness of the complexities of work in both public and private sectors. The model rests on four key platforms that are constructed from important foundational values and principles. These platforms are: Accountability, Consultation, Cultural Sensitivity and Critical Reflection, and underlie the dynamic five-step process that uses a reflective yet pragmatic approach to identify and analyze all relevant aspects of an ethical dilemma. The article begins by exploring the anatomy of an ethical dilemma, including the identification of competing ethical principles. It then moves on to highlight the different points in a decision-making process where difficulties typically arise for practitioners who may confront problems of interpretation of ethical codes, lack of access to needed resources and supports, or who may find themselves bound by legal or organizational restrictions. It is argued that this model has useful application for both social work education and practice.

Part-time Employment and Effects on Australian Social Work Students: A Report on a National Study

Abstract University students, nationally as well as internationally, engage in employment to supplement income while studying. Social work students are no different in this respect. There have long been questions about whether such part-time work has an adverse impact on student academic performance. This paper explored the experiences of social work students enrolled on-campus across three Australian universities as reported through a survey and focus groups. The research found that social work students did engage in significant amounts of paid employment while studying, that there were both positives and negatives for students depending on the nature of their employment, and that compromises needed to be made in juggling competing responsibilities. Accessing and living on inadequate government benefits imposed particular stressors. The findings have implications for the ways in which social work education is structured, especially in terms of flexibility, and demonstrated that part-time work also offers opportunities for student learning.

‘Who cares?’ An exploratory study of carer needs in adult mental health

Abstract Overall, health professionals have been slow to recognise the needs of families and carers, and have tended to marginalise their input in aiding consumer recovery. Despite the rhetoric of carer inclusion in mental health policy, the continued lack of systematic involvement of carers in mental health systems ensures that they remain outside the realm of core business in mental health treatment. Based on dialogues with 31 participants in a series of focus groups who are directly engaged in caring for an adult with a serious mental illness, this study reinforces the need for carer inclusion and legitimacy, and highlights necessary changes to service delivery that acknowledge carer isolation and secondary stigma. The importance of psychoeducation programs, consistency in case management roles, and better information about the interface with legal systems were seen as particularly critical.

Putting ethics on the organisational agenda: The social work ethics audit on trial

Findings are presented from an Australian study on the implementation and evaluation of a Social Work Ethics Audit Risk Management Tool. The aim of the research is to determine the extent to which ethics audits are useful and applicable to Australian human service organisations. Over the period of the study, social workers and other human services staff and volunteers used the ethics audit to achieve outcomes that included provision of legitimate space for discussion of ethics in the workplace, and identification of gaps in knowledge and skills about ethical practice, and the policies and procedures that support and enhance such practice. The paper provides an analysis of how practitioners and managers grapple with the concept of ethical risk management, and outlines strategies that were developed in an effort to move towards greater accountability and ethical reflection in practice.

Interprofessional Ethics: Collaboration in the Social, Health and Human Services

Introduction 1. Ethics in professional practice - an interprofessional perspective 2. Moral philosophy and ethical theory: setting the foundations 3. Ethical activism - exploring human rights and social justice in the interprofessional space 4. Regulation of the professions: codes of ethics and standards of practice 5. Ethical decision making 6. Ethical principles in practice 7. Professional integrity and e-professionalism 8. Ethics in the workplace 9. Keeping ethics on the agenda: strategies for future practice Conclusion.

Raising the Titanic: Rescuing Social Work Documentation from the Sea of Ethical Risk

Abstract One of the most contentious issues in social work practice concerns what should be written about people who access social work services, how comprehensively, and in what format social work assessments, interventions, and outcomes should be documented. The present paper describes a structured approach linked to an action research project that was undertaken by hospital-based social workers to identify and minimise problems associated with documentation in the medical record. The Social Work Ethics Audit provided social work staff with a risk-management tool that highlighted documentation as a key area of ethical risk. Through a process of evaluating existing recording practices, social workers were able to meet the challenge of improving social work recording in medical records, returning it to its proper place as a vital component of clinical and ethical practice rather than an administrative task submerged beneath competing priorities. It was anticipated that the social work documentation proforma that resulted from the ethics audit process would have applicability in other health care settings.

Exploring the Concept of Moral Distress with Community-Based Researchers: An Australian Study

ABSTRACT Community-based research (CBR) refers to an applied research methodology that is conducted in community settings in partnership between academic and nonacademic participants in research. This article reports on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with 11 Australian CBR researchers between 2008 and 2009. The interviews were designed to explore whether university-employed CBR researchers experience the particular phenomenon of “moral distress,” or feelings of helplessness to act in accordance with ones moral values due to systemic or institutional constraints. Study results found that the CBR researchers experienced unavoidable moral distress at varying levels of intensity related to blurred boundaries between settings, participants, and stakeholders. Based on the outcomes of this study, further research and enhanced professional development and training practices are recommended.

Ethics of the Spirit: Comparing Ethical Views and Usages of Spiritually Influenced Interventions

Abstract Social work practice takes many different forms, depending on purpose and context. An increased diversity in fields and methods of practice has driven the need to explore the intersection between acceptable standards of practice and issues pertaining to religion and spirituality. This discussion utilises the opportunity to co-report on the findings of a selection of similar questions gathered from two independent online survey studies, conducted one year apart, with members of the Australian Association of Social Workers. One study explored attitudes and behaviours about ethical conduct, and the other investigated the role of religion and spirituality in social work practice. Findings from the questions in common, about the acceptability and practice of spiritually-influenced forms of intervention, are presented. These indicate a degree of acceptance, conditional acceptance, and usage for some interventions, and clear non-acceptance and non-usage of others. Implications for ethical thinking in practice, education, and research are explored.