Ethical Issues in Child Protective Services, Thesis of Financial Accounting

Download Ethical Issues in Child Protective Services and more Thesis Financial Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! ORG 6520 Moral and Ethical Framework ORG 6520 Final Paper Introduction Child protective services have ethical issues within the agency that can negatively affect the lives of the individuals they serve. Within this agency, multiple challenges are being faced, such as investigating child abuse cases and managing open cases. Employees having to assist with these cases could face compassion fatigue, burnout, and stress. The following paragraphs will discuss the process of child protective services and how to implement theories and new producers to assist the agency in making sure everyone has the best interest of the children they serve. Ethical Issues with Child Protection Services Within the child protection services field, investigations, and management of cases that involve child abuse and neglect, there has been arising from ethical issues. These issues have stemmed from parents' conflicts, the reluctance of mandated reporting, child protective service employees experiencing burnout, and constraints (Larcher, 2007, p.208). With these issues happening within child protective services cases, it causes the agency to appear unreliable and affect the children they serve. It seems as though the child protective services agency needs redesigning the ethical standards of their organization. Being a child protective services employee can be very demanding and stressful. Anyone can make a report of child abuse any time of day, and it is required of case works to be available and on-call twenty-four hours. With this kind of work schedule and consistently having to be prepared for work, it is difficult for child protective services to retain employees and ensure that employees are adequately trained. Having individuals working in this kind of environment allows there to be a lack of responsibility and accountability. Thus causing caseworkers to not willingly fulfill their duties to ensure they are protecting children from abuse. For instance, when a child protective services caseworker receives a call to investigate a child's parents, it could be uncomfortable and make the caseworker feel unsafe in their home. Working in these conditions could affect an individual's ethical obligations to ensure that they provide them with enough support and resources to overcome their abusive situations. Ethical Theories Applied It is a child protective services case worker's ethical and legal duty to make sure that they keep in mind the best interest of all children. Currently, child protective services approaches have been difficult to understand and have not been in the best interest of the children they serve (Larcher, 2007, p.208). When investigating parents for their cases, employees do not have an obligation to believe that they are entirely honest with them about the injuries that caused child protective services to become involved. Caseworkers need to serve the child with their best interests in mind. By doing so, they will be protecting the child and keeping them away from any severe injuries. The purpose of these ethical practices was put into place was to help the child protective services is to ensure that their employees are to follow the roles and responsibilities of their position. child protective services. Doing this will help keep a record of individuals involved in child protective service cases no matter their location. Only individuals who work for child protective services, work with child protective services, and mandated reporters access this universal database. The reasoning for granting mandated reporters is to help provide them with h some in- site when dealing with a situation where they suspect child abuse is happening. Sharing this information with individuals that assist child protective services would help strengthen the system and help remove children from unsafe environments. When a call of suspected child abuse is made, a child protective services caseworker tends to do the first part of the investigation independently. With caseworkers conducting these investigations by themselves, it causes them to be placed in situations where they could be unsafe and in harm's way. If they investigate parents, caseworkers are often physically and verbally threatened by those they are interviewing in these harmful situations. However, having an assigned law enforcement officer accompany the caseworker on the investigation would help if any conflict arises during the interviewing process, and they would be an additional witness. Lastly, if they suspect the child protective service caseworker is interviewing become aggressive towards the caseworker, the law enforcement officer could potentially place the individuals in immediate custody. Providing child protective service employees with proper training and professional development helps employees maintain knowledge and integrity within the field. It is also essential for child protective services to help keep their employees up to date on any changes in laws and statute of limitations to ensure that they handle these investigations correctly and professionally. This would help them create a positive work environment, better retain employees, strengthen all individuals' skills, and make training mandatory for all staff members. Implementing the following procedures into the child protective services process would help minimize the issues they are having and create a professional environment where employees are more engaged in their roles and completing their job duties. Also, employees will no longer have to experience massive amounts of burnout due to being on call twenty-four hours a day. A routing on-call sheet will be created due to the new access to the database and no longer conducting investigations independently. Allowing employees to have more professional development access allows them to grow more professionally and improve their ethical morals. If all three of these new procedures are implemented at once, ethical issues rarely happen within child protective services. Conclusion Within every field or profession, an ethical issue can occur in the organization. No matter the situation, it is essential for employees to show ethical competency and decide the best interest of the client they are serving. When anyone begins to display unethical behaviors, the organization must take the proper steps to correct the employee's actions and correct their behaviors. It would be helpful to reach out to other organizations, collect proper resources, and collaborate with other individuals to resolve any ethical dilemmas that could potentially affect the organization's structure. References Larcher, V. (2007). Ethical issues in child protection. Clinical Ethics, 2(4), 208-212. https://doi.org/10.1258/14777500783560175 National Association of Social Work (2020). Code of Ethics. Retrieved November 1, 2020, from URL https://www.socialworkers.rog/about/ethics/code-of-ethics/code-of-ethics-english Osmo, R., & Landau, R.(2006). The Role of Ethical Theories in Decision making by Social Workers. Social Work Education, 25(8), 863-876. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615470600915910