Should Social Work Clients Have the Right to Effective Treatment?

Abstract

Currently, the codes of ethics developed for social workers by NASW and other professional associations do not suggest that clients have the right to receive effective, empirically validated treatment. In addition, the codes place no explicit emphasis on empirically validated treatments when referring to social work competence, education, research, supervision, or the profession as a whole. Does the social work client have the right to receive effective treatment when such interventions are known to be available? Should the NASW Code of Ethics include such requirements to encourage more responsible behavior on the part of social work practitioners? This article considers some of the issues involved in this debate and offers suggestions as to how codes of ethics could be modified to include clients' right to receive effective treatment and social workers' obligation to be educated about and to provide such treatment.

Effects of Cognitive Versus Cognitive-Behavioral Divorce-Parenting Programs on Parental Conflict, Intimate Violence, Parental Communication, Divorce-Related Parental Behaviors and Children's Behavioral Problems

“…As described above, the study had originally intended to capture the variable of intimate violence through two distinct yet related measures, the 3-item scale from Newmark, Harrell & Salem (1995) and the specific one-item questions regarding the use of permanent injunctions. The 3-item scale was dropped due to low reliability.…”

“…In the absence of deliberate efforts to identify and understand the results of parents participating in divorce-parenting classes, it will be difficult, and arguably inconsistent with social work ethics, to continue to advocate for individuals to be mandated to attend these programs (Myers & Thyer, 1997). If courses do not result in producing some of the outcomes they were created for, then resources should be shifted to programs that have been proven to work or to classes focused on intervening in those families with the most violence (Kibler, Sanchez, & Baker-Jackson, 1994;Mclsaac & Finn, 1999).…”

“…The study's results are also somewhat limited since the more complete measure of intimate violence, the three-item scale from Newmark, Harrell and Salem (1995), had to be excluded from all analysis and results due to its rather low reliabilities (i.e., a = .43 for the pretest and a = .36 for the posttest). With this measure dropped from the study, the only measures left of intimate violence were the two one-item scales inquiring about the need and use of permanent injunctions.…”

“…The remaining intimate violence one-item scales (i.e., RELHIS6, RELHIS6F, RELHIS7 and RELHIS7F) that solicited information about the need for permanent injunctions as a self-report outcome measure of that dependent variable were retained. These items could not have reliabilities run on them because they are single item indicators.As described above, the study had originally intended to capture the variable of intimate violence through two distinct yet related measures, the 3-item scale from Newmark, Harrell & Salem (1995) and the specific one-item questions regarding the use of permanent injunctions. The 3-item scale was dropped due to low reliability.…”

Doing Good Science without Sacrificing Good Values: Why the Heuristic Paradigm is the Best Choice for Social Work

“…(For an incisive analysis that illuminates why this may have happened, see Collins, 1990, p. 219, andHartman, 1995. ) Proponents of logical empiricism continue to constrain academic freedom (as documented by Cloward, 1998), devalue research contributions that do not match their unwarranted, methodologically-based criteria for scientific knowledge (Grinnell, 1997;Rubin & Babbie, 2001;Task Force on Social Work Research, 1991;Williams, Unrau, & Grinnell, 1998), create divisions between practitioners and researchers and between scientists and advocates (Gibbs, 1983;Reid, 1994a;Rubin & Babbie, 2001;Thyer & Myers, 1998), promote or exclude approaches to practice based solely on whether or not they are supported by a flawed and pervasively distorting (logical empiricist) approach to research (Myers & Thyer, 1997;Reid, 1994aReid, , 1994bThyer, 1991), and completely misrepresent the heuristic paradigm and the issues at stake for the field (Anastas & MacDonald, 1994;Anastas, 1999;Bolland & Atherton, this issue;Thyer, 1993;Williams, Unrau, & Grinnell, 1998). These problems are exacerbated by logical empiricist textbooks that first thoroughly misrepresent the ideas and issues involved, and then do not even provide students with citations to the sources capable of rectifying these thoroughgoing misrepresentations (Grinnell, 1997;Royse, 1999;Rubin & Babbie, 2001).…”