Ethical dilemmas that a social worker working in child protection Essay

Ethical dilemmas that a social worker working in child protection would encounter. (australia) - Essay Example Studies show that such ethical concerns reduce the scope of child protection social works since those issues prevent social workers from obtaining grip over various underlying causes of child maltreatment. This paper will analyze major ethical dilemmas a social worker would commonly experience while engaging in child protection works. The paper will also identify ethical issues in indigenous contexts separately and discuss core ethical principles of social work and community welfare practices. Social workers cannot meet desired objectives of child protection unless they can separate the child from harmful parents and move it to monitoring and surveillance facilities. However, it is not so easy for a social worker to separate the child from his parents even though they are maltreating it. The Australian federal government allows its citizens to exercise various decision rights over their children regarding religion, schooling, medical treatment, and where their child lives etc (Government of South Australia, 2010). When a child is separated from his parent, the parent cannot exercise his legal rights over his child. In addition, a parent has the fundamental right to take ultimate decisions on his child’s matters as long as the child is a minor. Therefore, separation of the child from his parents is the most ethical dilemma involved in the child protection social work. As Kumar (2004, p.34) points out, child protection social workers’ role is often coercive even though they may possess adequate skills and capabilities to work supportively. They are expected to take potential decisions to save children from abuse and negligence, and therefore social workers’ acts are considered unavoidable even though they use some brutal intervention tactics to address the problem. Hence, many of the people believe that social workers have been given the choice to behave oppressively. Such