This article draws on findings of an international study of social workers’ ethical challenges during COVID-19, based on 607 responses to a qualitative survey. Ethical challenges included the following: maintaining trust, privacy, dignity and service user autonomy in remote relationships; allocating limited resources; balancing rights and needs of different parties; deciding whether to break or bend policies in the interests of service users; and handling emotions and ensuring care of self and colleagues. The article considers regional contrasts, the ‘ethical logistics’ of complex decision-making, the impact of societal inequities, and lessons for social workers and professional practice around the globe.
Professional practice is fundamental because it represents the link between theoretical training and the application of skills and knowledge in the professional field. In March 2020, howe- ver, COVID-19 obliged teaching staff to redesign their professional practicums to ensure that they satisfied the requirements established for their training activities. In this context, digital portfolios were seen as a fundamental tool. The main aim of this article is to analyse the usefulness of the digital portfolio as a learning tool for the supervision of students taking part in practicums as part of their Master’s in Social Intervention at the Public University of Navarre. Our research methodo- logy involves a qualitative case study in which we analysed digital portfolios prepared by students during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years. We show that, as a supervision tool, these port- folios have more strengths than weaknesses. Moreover, our conclusions provide numerous useful suggestions for improving the future use of these portfolios.
This article presents the main ethical challenges faced by social work professionals in Spain during the "first wave" of COVID-19 in 2020. The pandemic had a serious impact not only on the health sector, but also in the field of social work. During this time, social workers had to address serious ethical questions regarding issues such as confidentiality breaches, how to fairly distribute available resources, the lack of personal contact and emotional connection with the service users, the difficulties of working in isolation and online, doubts about the reliability of the information they were handling and the difficulty of making proper diagnoses. An international research group led by Dr. Sara Banks conducted a broader research project in collaboration with the International Federation of Social Workers, which collected information through an online questionnaire aimed at social workers from various countries. In this article we analyse the results related to the main ethical challenges faced by social workers in Spain. The research group identified two types of ethical challenges that they have separated into two sections: the first section is related to direct intervention with users, which includes topics such as the lack of emotional support, reliability, use of technology, the appropriate care, compliance with the highest professional standards, confidentiality, vulnerability, and the fair distribu-tion of resources. The other section is related to the ethical challenges around the daily work within social entities, which involved dealing with issues such as the e-social work and coordination difficulties, the management of pressure in social bodies and changes in the intervention methodology.
Keywords: Social work ethics, pandemic, international research, COVID
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