By Elaine P. Congress, DSW, Chair, Committee on Ethics and Professional Standards
(February/March 1996)

While NASW's current Code of Ethics does not address these questions, the proposed new Code of Ethics which has been drafted by a special national NASW committee, includes these issues, as well as others, which are on the cutting edge of current social work practice.

This proposed Code of Ethics differs significantly from the current Code in format as well as content. While the current Code includes only a preamble, summary, and listing of social work's ethical responsibilities in seven major areas, the proposed new Code of Ethics includes a preamble, statement of purpose, a section on social work ethical principles which enumerates social work values, and concludes with specific ethical standards "to guide social workers' conduct and to provide a basis for adjudication."

This section on ethical standards provides much more comprehensive guidelines than the current Code of Ethics. The new Code is more likely to cover what we might view as exceptions to social work principles. For example, the proposed Code, like the current Code, stresses that the social worker's primary responsibility is to promote clients' interests. The new Code, however, advises that a social worker's responsibility to society or legal obligations may take precedence over a social worker's responsibility to clients. In addition, specific examples such as the social worker's requirement to report child abuse and to intervene when a client threatens to harm self or others are included.

Exceptions to other important social work principles, including self determination and confidentiality, are also outlined. This is more helpful to the social worker who, operating under the current Code, is often uncertain about situations in which confidentiality and self determination should be superseded. For example, many social workers have struggled with what are "compelling professional reasons" to share client confidences. The proposed Code clearly enumerates that social workers are not expected to keep information confidential when "disclosure is necessary to prevent serious, foreseeable, and imminent harm to a client or other identifiable person or when laws...permit or require disclosure without a client's consent."

Other areas which are addressed more fully or for the first time in the proposed Code include informed consent, cultural competence, sexual harassment, conflicts of interest in family and group work, sexual and other dual relationships with clients and their relatives, and responsibility to impaired/incompetent colleagues.

While currently the Code of Ethics states that social workers have an ethical responsibility to provide information including "risks, rights, opportunities, and obligations" about the nature of social work services which will be provided, the new Code discusses more specifically the responsibility of the social worker to provide for informed consent in a language and manner in which clients can understand. As many social workers provide services to involuntary clients, social workers responsibility to "provide information about the nature and extent of services (as well as) the extent of client's right to refuse service" is explicitly stated.

Important additions to the new Code include sections on cultural competency and social diversity, as well as sexual harassment. Social workers are advised to study cultural differences and oppression among their clients and to provide services which reflect their sensitivity to these differences. Increasingly, social service agencies include policies about sexual harassment, and now this policy will be included in the NASW Code of Ethics. Not only are social workers advised to avoid sexual harassment of clients, but also sexual harassment of colleagues who are employees, supervisees, or students.

An ongoing criticism of the current Code of Ethics has been that it focuses primarily on issues for the individual practitioner while many social workers practice primarily with families and groups. The new Code addresses how a social worker should handle a conflict of interest (by clarifying who are clients and what the social worker's responsibility to each party is) and in terms of confidentiality (by promoting confidentiality as much as possible but also discussing limitations with all involved parties).

While the current Code does include a section about social workers avoiding dual relationships with clients and former clients when there is risk of exploitation or potential harm to clients, as well as a prohibition against sexual relationships with clients, there is still much ambiguity about the appropriateness of dual relationships, especially with former clients. The proposed Code explicitly states that the social worker should avoid sexual contact with former clients, as well as avoid providing clinical services to clients with whom one has had a previous sexual relationship. Also prohibited is the social worker's sexual involvement with a relative or close friend of current clients.

The current Code enumerates that the social worker has an ethical responsibility to help a colleague impaired by "personal problems, psychosocial distress, substance abuse, or mental health difficulty" seek remedial help. In attempting to follow this Code provision, many social workers have found that a colleague often denies having a problem. The new Code expands impaired to also include the incompetent social worker and enumerates that if the social worker is impaired and/or incompetent and does not take adequate steps to address this impairment/incompe-tence, the ethical social worker should take action "through appropriate channels established by employing agencies, NASW, licensing and regulatory bodies, and other professional organizations."

This article summarizes what I see as the most significant changes in the proposed Code of Ethics. I would urge all social workers to read the proposed Code which is reprinted in full in the January issue of the national NASW News. The Ethics and Professional Standards Committee of the New York City Chapter is studying the new Code of Ethics and would welcome any feedback from NASW members. Next summer in Washington, the Delegate Assembly, which will include a 20 member delegation from the New York City Chapter, will vote upon this new proposed Code of Ethics before it becomes effective.

To help Chapter members learn more about the proposed Code, Dr. Frederick Reamer, the chair of the national NASW committee responsible for its drafting, will be the keynote speaker at the annual Ethics and Professional Standards Conference to be held this year at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service on April 19, 1996. Please call me at (212) 636-6627.