Considering what you wrote as your initial “gut” solution, you will apply that solution/decision to the framework presented in the textbook. After working through each step of the framework, you will re-evaluate your initial “gut” solution, and develop at least two alternative solutions (at least one must be biblically principled).
This assignment has already been done once, incorrectly. Graciously, my professor allowed me to resubmit it, so I need help doing so. If you cannot do it or do not have the time to do it, please don’t bid. This assignment was due yesterday so it is already late now, so I have under the end of the day tomorrow to submit it. I will be submitting all required docs.
Requirements: 4 pages
Ethical Dilemma Paper: Moral Framework Assignment Instructions
For this second paper, you will use the Morality Framework (from the course text) to evaluate your initial “gut reaction” solution to the ethical dilemma identified in your Ethical Dilemma Paper: Initial Reaction Assignment.
Considering what you wrote as your initial “gut” solution, you will apply that solution/decision to the framework presented in the textbook. After working through each step of the framework, you will re-evaluate your initial “gut” solution, and develop at least two alternative solutions (at least one must be biblically principled). Additionally, you will address the role that supervision and consultation would have within this dilemma.
This paper must be at least 4 pages long. The title and reference page are not included in this page count. This paper should be written in current APA 7th edition formatting. Be sure to include appropriate references and citations from the text and scripture. The proper use of headings will help organize your paper.
Instructions
Use the Morality Framework on pages 44-49 (Step 1, #1–10 and Step 2) to analyze the ethical dilemma identified in your part 1 paper. Note: The moral rules are provided on page 43 of your text.
Please number the steps in your paper and use level two headings to organize your paper. Do not write this portion in paragraph form. You are strongly encouraged to utilize the template provided in the assignment resources in the assignment description (you can save this and type your own information into it).
If any of the steps are not applicable to your situation, please note this in your paper. Simply leaving the steps out or marking them N/A will result in a loss of points. You need to explain why the step is not applicable, in order to demonstrate your understanding of each particular step. Thoughtful analysis for each step should be applied here.
Remember that you are analyzing the decision you must make as the worker in this dilemma.
Re-evaluate your initial “gut” solution.
Now that you have worked through your initial solution utilizing the framework, analyze your solution. This section should demonstrate an ability to see all sides of a dilemma and make decisions that reflect social work values and a focus on the client. Simply stating, “I still agree with my initial reaction,” will not suffice here.
Describe at least two alternative solutions and provide a rationale for each.
At least 1 of the solutions must reflect a biblical worldview, and you must support this solution with scripture and biblical principles. This area should reflect your ability to conceptualize alternative actions, and how those actions will impact your client.
Discuss how you could use supervision and consultation as a resource when evaluating the potential solutions.
What would be the benefit in talking with your supervisor about this dilemma? How would you approach your supervisor about this situation?
Are there others who would be appropriate to consult about this particular situation? If so, who and how do you think they could be of assistance to you?
What additional resources could you examine (e.g. agency policy, State or federal laws, etc.) to assist you in evaluating the potential solutions?
When submitting your part 2 paper, please also re-submit your part 1 paper. It will not be re-graded, so no changes are needed. This will allow the instructor to quickly reference your part 1 discussion and identified gut solution.
The paper is to be written in APA format. The paper will be graded per the rubric, which reflects a 70/30 break-down (70% of the grade is weighted for content, 30% is weighted for mechanics/grammar/formatting). There is no need to include an abstract in the paper. This paper assesses Competency 1- Ethical and Professional Behavior (knowledge, values, cognitive & affective processes).
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
Ethical Dilemma Paper: Moral Framework Assignment (TEMPLATE)
Student Name
Department, University
Course
Professor
Date
Ethical Dilemma Paper: Moral Framework Assignment
In this paragraph you will include an introduction, setting up the paper. What is this paper about? This would be a great place to explain the moral framework (and provide references). You should briefly state the dilemma and what your gut solution was. For the rest of this assignment, you should focus on your gut solution. Remember, you are also asked to submit your part one paper (it is easiest to include it as a second document in your final submission).
Step 1: Morally Relevant Features
What moral rule is being violated?
As you answer this question, remember that you are focusing on your decision as the worker. We are not analyzing the morality of our client’s actions or what others are doing in the scenario. Go back to your gut solution from part 1 and answer this question: In making that decision, what moral rule (from page 39 in your text) are you violating? This will involve some critical thinking. You do not need to list out all the violations, just explain the ones you are violating.
What harms are: (a) being caused by the violation; (b) avoided by the violation; (c) prevented by the violation?
Continue answering all these questions on pages 41-45 of your text in this format (there are 10). Remember, you are continuing to analyze your decision as the worker. For the purpose of this assignment, the answer to each of these section do not need to be a lengthy paragraph, but should fully address the question. ***YOU MUST ADDRESS ALL 10 QUESTIONS*** Each question should have its own level 2 heading, even if you are explaining why it does not apply to your scenario.
Step 2: Consequences
In this step 2 you are considering the consequences if your decision were to be publicly known. This is another way of considering your decision. How might other clients feel if they knew you would always respond in this way? What about other families? Your employer? Etc. Consider your answers to these questions – does that impact how you feel about the decision you made?
Re-Evaluating Gut Solution
In this section you will go back to your initial gut solution. Now that you have worked through the framework, do you agree with your gut solution? Why or why not? This section should demonstrate the ability to see all sides of a dilemma and make decision that reflect social work values and a focus on the client. Simply stating, “I still agree with my initial reaction,” will not suffice here.
Alternative Solutions
Describe at least two alternative ways you could respond in this dilemma and provide a rationale for each. At least one of these solutions should reflect a biblical worldview. When discussing a biblical worldview, keep in mind your role. Stating that you would quote scripture to the client will not be appropriate in most circumstances. Additionally, consulting with your supervisor is not an alternative solution. That is not an action. That is consultation/supervision, which will be addressed in the next section. In this section you need to demonstrate your ability to conceptualize alternative actions and how those actions will impact your client.
Consultation and Supervision
Discuss how you could use supervision and consultation as a resource when evaluating the potential solutions. What would be the benefit in talking with your supervisor about this dilemma? How would you approach your supervisor? Are there others who would be appropriate to consult about this situation? If so, who, and how would they be appropriate? What additional resources could you examine (e.g. agency policy, State or federal laws, etc.) to assist you in evaluating the potential solutions?
Conclusion
With all collegiate writing, don’t forget to include a conclusion, summarizing what you have talked about in your assignment. Remember that this paper should have at least 4 pages long (not including the cover and reference pages). If you have not met that length requirement, then you have not fully completed the assignment and more discussion is needed.
References
Note: **When formatting your reference page, remember to double-space references with the first line flush with the left margin and the subsequent lines indented. References should be listed in alphabetical order.
When you have a question about APA format, click the Writing Style Guides on the left-hand column of Canvas. It will take you to a link to Liberty’s Online Writing Center, which has a wealth of resources including sample papers and the APA Quick Guide.
The following information is to help you with citing the Bible and textbook:
As a sample Bible citation, please see the following example for the NIV version of the Bible. Your in-text citations would be as follows: (New International Version, 1978/2011) or (New International Version, 1978/2011, John 3:16) depending on how you use it.
In the reference list, it would be as follows:
New International Version Bible. (2011). Zondervan. (Original work published 1978)
Or, if you accessed it online:
New International Version Bible. (2011). The NIV Bible. https://www.thenivbible.com/ (Original work published 1978)
As far as the textbook, here is the proper citation:
Bryan, V., Sanders, S., & Kaplan, L. (2016). The Helping Professional’s Guide to Ethics.
Oxford.
Step 1: Identify the Morally Relevant Features of the Case.
Identifying the morally relevant features of a case means separating facts that are morally relevant from those that are not. Gert (2004) provides 10 questions that can aid in determining whether a fact or circumstance is morally relevant to a particular case.
1. Which moral rule is being violated? This is perhaps the most fundamental of all the morally relevant features. It is both sobering and humbling for social workers to honestly appraise their interactions with clients and realize just how often they find themselves in situations that involve violating a moral rule. Clearly articulating this is, however, the first step in determining whether the action is justifiable. Questionable actions often involve possibly violating several moral rules at once, as in the child welfare example given previously. It is important to identify all potential rules violations, because they each may carry independent weight worthy of consideration.
2. What harms are: (a) being caused by the violation; (b) avoided by the violation; or (c) prevented by the violation? Here, the decision maker modifies the generic moral rule (e.g., do not cause pain) to make it specific to the case facts (e.g., clinical intervention that causes great emotional discomfort, such as immersion therapy). Harms caused, avoided, and prevented by an action should be analyzed separately. The key difference between avoiding and preventing harms is inevitability of the harm and, in some cases, is a matter of known or unknown probabilities. To lay bare the difference between the concepts, consider the example of injuries resulting from car accidents. If one is driving down a two-lane road and an 18-wheeler comes barreling down the wrong side of the road, the driver will typically react by swerving out of the pathway of the truck, avoiding death or serious injury. Contrast that scenario with the very common “click it or ticket” law enforcement agencies’ public service announcements shown on television. These advertisements are also intended to reduce the risk of car accident injuries, but there is no sense of immediacy or inevitability that a car accident injury is imminent, so these are more correctly considered attempts to prevent rather than avoid that type of harm.
This underscores the importance of one’s knowledge about the facts of a case. Often in the realm of human services your understanding of harms is greatly influenced by your knowledge of the facts. This also underscores the ethical relevance of being a lifelong learner and increasing your understanding of the populations you serve and the kinds of problems they face. Your depth of knowledge about risks and benefits to clients regarding various interventions and activities increases with contributions to the knowledge base, and in order to be a competent, ethical practitioner, you have a duty to stay current.
3. What are the desires and beliefs of the person toward whom the rule is being violated? This is fairly self-explanatory, but still deserves further explication. First, are the desires and beliefs of the individual rational? Do they reflect competency? Or, in other words, does the individual exhibit the ability to make a rational decision of a certain kind? The helping professional’s assessment of the client’s competency is often used as a primary justification for overriding the beliefs and/or wishes of the client, albeit that should not be the only consideration. Chapter 5 takes a more comprehensive look at competency.
This morally relevant feature exhorts the individual considering the violation to also consider the perspective of the one toward whom the violation is being committed. In short, it promotes empathy. The ability to “put on the other person’s shoes” should be intuitive, but for some reason in the helping relationship, perhaps because there is an inherent power differential, or because of the perceived need to be rationally detached from clients, or because the social worker is inadvertently influenced by the stigma associated with clients, it is often overlooked. Helping professionals should also be mindful of the reasonable beliefs or expectations that clients may have with regard to the nature of the helping relationship.
4. Is the nature of the relationship between the person violating the rule and the person toward whom the rule is being violated such that the former sometimes has a duty to violate certain moral rules with regard to the latter without their consent? For example, consider that in most societies, parents are expected to care and provide for their children. Most would agree that caring and providing for children does not involve giving them permission to do whatever they want. Thus, in the context of caring and providing, parents often violate their child’s freedom as a normal part of the childrearing process. They can and are even encouraged to “force” their children to do chores around the house or go to soccer practice even when the children don’t feel like it. The parent/child example is the most obvious case where violations of the child’s freedom (i.e., mandatory bedtimes, curfews, chores) are considered normal and healthy within the context of understood developmental parameters. Another example would be a situation where a person has a legal duty to make decisions on behalf of another, as in the case of an adult child who has been given durable power of attorney and the right to make decisions in the event of an elderly parent being incapacitated. In this latter example, however, caution is merited in that having the legal right to make decisions on behalf of another does not make it inherently moral to do so. This question applies only to a specific relational context wherein one person has a duty to make decisions for another, and it rarely applies directly to the helping professional/client relationship itself, but rather to other actors within a situation. In other cases, it does not apply. In cases in which this type of relationship is present, it is an important consideration and must be incorporated into the analysis.
5. What goods are being promoted by the violation? Most rational persons agree that sometimes a violation of a moral rule is justified simply based on the goods that the violation promotes. For example, many states have seat belt laws, which clearly violate a person’s freedom to choose whether to wear a seat belt. Yet most agree such a law is justifiable based on the overwhelming amount of evidence that supports the idea that seat belts save lives. However, cases such as this are not commonly subject to an explicit ethical analysis because the reasoning behind the minor rules violation is so self-evident. In truly problematic ethical scenarios, though, defending rules violations based only on promotion of goods is often insufficient. Indeed, “I was just trying to help the client!” is a common refrain of professionals found in violation of ethics standards.
6. Is the rule being violated toward someone to prevent the person from violating a moral rule when their violation would be (a) unjustified or (b) weakly justified? An obvious example here would be in the case of a federal marshal putting a chokehold on a gunman attempting to hijack a plane. In this scenario, nobody would question whether the person placing the chokehold on the gunman was morally justified. Most states have laws indicating that helping professionals have a “duty to warn” third parties who have been imminently threatened by their client. This morally relevant feature absolutely comes into play when a therapist is faced with making a decision based on the duty to warn mandate. Obviously, this is more complex than the previous example and requires more thoughtful consideration and assessment of other morally relevant features, but it is reasonable to assume that, if one violates the confidentiality of their client, at the very least doing so would prevent the client from violating another moral rule such as “do not kill” or “do not cause pain.”
7. Is the rule being violated toward a person because they have violated a moral rule (a) unjustifiably or (b) with a weak justification? It should be noted that both this question and Question 6 have limited situational applicability and are not necessarily helpful in extracting morally relevant information outside those specific situations. Question 7 mainly addresses ethical situations arising from the criminal justice and school discipline contexts. Most rational and impartial persons agree that it is morally justifiable to deprive a person of freedom if they have violated other moral rules. Discrepancies and injustice in the justice system result from a discrepancy in the fair application of this morally relevant feature to diverse groups of people.
8. Are there any alternative actions or policies that would be morally preferable? Often overlooked is this question: Is violating a moral rule in any given case really the only option? Actions that don’t violate moral rules are typically preferred to those that do. The exception might be the moral rule of “do not deceive.” Staff at a residential treatment facility for boys may feel lying to clients to get them to quiet down and go to bed at a decent hour might be preferable to simply telling the truth about a given situation, but just because something is easier doesn’t make it morally justifiable.
Gert and colleagues (1997) advocated considering only alternative actions that averted the rules violations entirely. Although considering such possibilities offers an appreciated third choice, that is not often what is available realistically. It is also important to consider actions or options that mitigate or alleviate the extent or severity of harms caused by rules violations in any way.
9. Is the violation being done intentionally or knowingly? In terms of justifying the violation of a moral rule, most rational people agree that intent can often provide proper justification in most noncontroversial moral matters. For example, a family that lied to save the life of a Jewish person from Nazi soldiers did so with the intent to save a life. They knowingly deceived to spare a life. They didn’t intend to deceive for the purpose of deceiving. Most would agree that in that scenario, knowingly violating the moral rule of “do not deceive” with the intent to save a life is morally justifiable. Of course, most also agree that intent as a sole justification for the violation of a moral rule is often inadequate. For example, most would agree that intent alone would not be an adequate justification for a social worker to lie to a client to get them to comply with a particular treatment. Good intentions are rarely enough to justify deception, let alone the violation of other moral rules. Considering other morally relevant features often demonstrates this.
10. Is the situation an emergency such that people are not likely to plan to be in that kind of situation? Certain kinds of emergencies may alter the kinds of decisions and judgments one makes in such a way as to justify the violation of a moral rule, when under a nonemergent situation such a violation would not be justifiable. A social worker who breaks a promise to meet with a client because of another client’s attempted suicide would be morally justified in doing so, but breaking the promise and forsaking one’s duty to go out with friends for happy hour is not justifiable.
The above list of questions should not be mistaken for a decision-making tree or checklist that one explicitly goes through when “considering the violation of a moral rule” (Gert, 2004, p. 73). It is rather a guide to delineating the morally relevant facts of a case to help determine whether an act is morally justifiable. Additionally, it helps differentiate between details of a case that are in fact moral in nature and ones that are not.
Step 2: Estimate the Consequences of Everyone Knowing that the Violation is Impartially and Publicly Allowed or Not Allowed.
This step is not a precise science. Like the first step, however, it emphasizes the importance of not only knowing the facts of the case, but also having knowledge about the circumstances surrounding the facts of the case that influence your understanding of present and potential harms. Another way of thinking about potential harms is by asking what long-term effects of publicly allowing a moral violation are likely to occur. Consider the willingness to falsify information on behalf of a client who needs services. In the moment, there may be moral criteria that make for a reasonable justification to lie, but most would agree that long-term effects of publicly allowing helping professionals to falsify information on behalf of needy clients only perpetuates a broken system. It also highlights the importance of social workers’ willingness to go public with a decision that involves the violation of a moral rule and its subsequent justification. Would you be willing for others to know that you will always lie on behalf of clients in order for them to receive services? Are you also willing that others be allowed to do the same thing for the same reason?
The concept of impartiality also plays a key role in determining whether an act is morally justifiable. The criteria for a justifiable violation of a moral rule should apply impartially to all members of a particular group. The person who is violating the moral rule must be willing to apply the criteria for justifying the violation impartially to all members of a particular group. For example, you would likely consider the actions of a police officer as being morally justifiable when they pull over a person speeding and give them a speeding ticket if it is clear that the person was, in fact, breaking the law and speeding. You expect law enforcement officers to enforce the rules of speeding in the same manner for all licensed drivers. You will probably be upset and indignant if the officer shows preferential treatment to a certain type of driver over another. (One of the authors is fairly certain this is the case when comparing the number of speeding tickets he’s received versus those of his wife!).
The case of Charles (see Box 3.1) offers an opportunity to apply Gert’s two-step procedure. (This case was introduced to doctoral students in an ethics class at the University of Kentucky.) First, are there any moral rules being violated here? The obvious answer is yes, the staff are deceiving Charles. The staff likely feel that the deception is justified, in that Charles is participating more in activities that are likely to benefit him based on the staff’s understanding of the relationship between certain activities and those in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. Does the good being promoted support this kind of deception? The staff might also argue that it is much easier to work with Charles when he participates. This argument is somewhat flawed in that it begs the question of whose needs are really being met: The staff’s? Or Charles’s? The staff are knowingly deceiving in order to get Charles to participate versus intentionally deceiving for the sake of simply being deceitful. However, based on the facts of the case, there is no indication that the staff considered alternative ways of convincing Charles to participate other than deception. Given the morally relevant features of this case, it appears that the staff have a fairly weak justification for their deception. In a recent ethics workshop, one of the authors used this case and participants were somewhat divided as to whether the deception was justifiable. However, when Step 2 was applied, participants were asked how they would feel about sharing with future residents and their families that, as a standard policy, staff reserve the right to lie in order to get residents to participate in activities. At that point, the participants quickly reached a consensus that the deception was not morally justifiable. It didn’t withstand the test of impartiality and going public.
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.
