Pandemic ethics: Rethinking rights, responsibilities and roles in social work

Abstract

This article explores responses of 41 UK social workers to ethical challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, utilising UK data from an international qualitative survey and follow-up interviews in 2020. Challenges ranged from weighing individual rights/needs against public health risks, to deciding whether to follow government/agency rules and guidance. Drawing on a narrative methodology to explore ethical agency, four broad types of response are identified: ethical confusion; ethical distress; ethical creativity and ethical learning. The article considers conditions that promote ethical creativity and learning: time and slow ethics; teamwork and co-creating the future and professional judgement and ethics work. It examines cognitive and emotional efforts required to make professional judgements in new conditions, when existing practices and procedures are unavailable, showing how the concept of ‘ethics work’ assists in identifying the invisible labour behind judgements and decisions in challenging circumstances. Whilst some practitioners sought clearer guidance from above, others made tailored professional ethical judgements about what would be right under particular circumstances for particular people. This capacity underpins good professional practice, and has been highlighted during the pandemic. It is important that social work post-pandemic reclaims the role of professional ethical judgement, which has been undermined by decades of managerialism and procedure-driven practice.

Good death disrupted: Nurses' moral emotions navigating clinical and public health ethics during the first wave of COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Hernández‐Fernández and Meneses‐Falcón (2021) note that staff willingness to breach protocols and to take a more holistic approach to facilitating farewells impacted on reducing families' grief. Our data reflect what Banks and Rutter (2022) have called ethical creativity, in which practitioners use both cognitive and emotional decision‐making to respond to novel situations, rather than reactive defiance of new regulations and policies.…”

“…Narrative ethics involves a tailored rather than rule‐bound approach to ethical deliberation with an interest in practitioners' motivations and intentions. Narrative ethics supports health workers' practice‐informed stories, which include emotions, where clinicians endeavour to construct an ethical identity while deconstructing problematic situations not resolved by applying abstract ethical concepts (Banks & Rutter, 2022). We agree with Banks and Rutter, that practitioners' ethics work has cognitive and emotional dimensions.…”

Learning Green Social Work in Global Disaster Contexts: A Case Study Approach

“…Social workers also faced ethical choices regarding personal risk and meeting the client's needs (Banks and Rutter 2021). Unable to ascertain each service user's level of adherence to COVID-19 protocols, every in-person interaction introduced a level of risk (UNICEF 2020).…”

“…Social workers and students can benefit from continuing an innovative evaluative process to ensure that social work increases in effectiveness and efficiency. Social workers have an ethical mandate to ensure the profession has an ongoing and increased emphasis on preparedness and mitigation (Banks and Rutter 2021). Focusing on preventative measures instead of a reactive response to a worldwide crisis, such as COVID-19, will augment the profession, increasing the effectiveness of future disaster responses (Nissen 2020).…”