Social care, social work and the law - England and Wales

by The Open University

Available in 17 free installments

Owner:

View book

Email address:

Enter your email address above to start receiving your free daily installments.

Dripread will never disclose your email address to third parties.

4.1 Unit themes and social work values

The next activity asks you to consider the relationship between the unit themes and value requirements for social care workers set out below.

Activity 4 Unit themes and social work values

0 hours 20 minutes

The core values of the Code of Practice for Social Care Workers (which are identical in both England and Wales) are as follows:

Social care workers must:

  • protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers;

  • strive to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and carers;

  • promote the independence of service users while protecting them as far as possible from danger and harm;

  • respect the rights of service users whilst seeking to ensure that their behaviour does not harm themselves or other people;

  • uphold public trust and confidence in social care services;

  • be accountable for the quality of their work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving their knowledge and skills.

(GSCC, 2002; CCW, 2000a)

Think about the five unit themes, and consider how they relate to the value requirements for social workers set out above. Write down which values you believe to be central to each of the themes (there may be several that apply to more than one theme). One box has been completed to get you started.

(Note that you can either print the page off to do this or simply write your answers on a piece of paper.)

Themes Values
Partnership
Empowerment and anti-oppressive practice Protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers. Strive to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and carers. Be accountable for the quality of work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving your knowledge and skills
Rights
Accountability
Valuing diversity

Discussion

Comment

In doing this activity you may have realised that some values apply to more than one theme. For example, the value requirement that social care workers protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers could be about ‘rights? as well as about working in an anti-oppressive way. Effective practice is about recognising how these values are central to social work.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence