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Australian Social Work
ISSN: 0312-407X (Print) 1447-0748 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasw20
Flapping on clipped wings: Social work ethics in
the age of activism
William De Maria
To cite this article: William De Maria (1997) Flapping on clipped wings: Social work ethics in the
age of activism, Australian Social Work, 50:4, 3-19, DOI: 10.1080/03124079708415740
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03124079708415740
Published online: 01 Feb 2008.
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Flapping on clipped wings: Social work ethics in the
age of activism
WILLIAM DE MARIA*
This article somewhat recklessly assumes that social workers can act ethically. It agrees in
other words that Husband’s notion of the morally active practitioner is possible, under the
right conditions (Husband 1995, ch.5). The paper also assumes that ethical principles can and
should be conflicted over, as they have been throughout human history. With great caution
and reservation the paper also accepts that virtue can be regulated and ethical action codified,
and that such codification can act as a moral lighthouse for social workers. What it does not
accept is that ethical principles can de-contextualised as they are in the Code of Ethics of the
AASW. The paper also critiques the Code for its pretensions to inclusivity. It argues that social
work does not have a moral centre, and that the activist part of the profession is disenfranchised. The paper profiles the case of an activist social worker who suffered mightily for
her principles. She fell victim to trumped up allegations of code violation, hence revealing a
dark and unexplored aspect of the new moralism sweeping the professions (De Maria 1995a).
Her story illustrates the tragic plight for a vulnerable minority in the profession. This narrow
and authoritarian moralism is seen as widely manifested in mainstream social work. In this
ethical climate, activist lions are thrown to the Christians. The article advocates for codified
ethical diversity and concludes with a push for an ethic of activism to share equal moral billing
with the more dominant ethic of care.
INTRODUCTION
W. ein‘re the nzaking wronggreat direction. progress, but “e’re Ogden heading Nash
The message in this paper can be expressed quite
simply; the Australian Association of Social Workers’
(AASW) Code of Ethics is inappropriately designed
to meet the awesome challenges of our troubled
times. The Code, in Nash’s terms, is going in the
opposite direction to the great social problems that
maintain a malevolent cloud cover over the Iives of
so many Australians. This position will develop
around the observation that the Code excludes
activist social work’, and thereby fails to ethically
honour direct action interventions such as civil disobedience, class action, strikes, protest resignations,
political liaison, media-dissenting, public rallying,
*William De Maria is a lecture< Departnzent ofSocial
Work & Social Policy, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane. An earlier version ofrhis paper was presented
to the Third National Conference ofthe Australian
Association for Professional and Applied Ethics, Charles
Stiirt University, Wagga Wagga,3-6 October 1996. The
author acknowledges the assistance ofRichard Hugman,
Keith Ung and the m a reviewers.
whistleblowing, and non-violent civil disturbances.
Because these direct action strategies confront power
head-on they differ from most social work interventions. Their advocates believe that only through
direct action will the welfare of the people rise. By
not recognising direct action the Code also ignores
direct activists, those social workers seeking to have
a greater impact on power and privilege than their
symptom-focused colleagues. Before proceeding
there are two issues that need to be identified in a
prefatory sense.
First is the vexed relationship between professions
and social action. This big topic keeps on being
reduced to the banal conclusion that professions
should be organised around the concept of service
not action. Thus there is a long tradition of mutual
antipathy between the concepts of profession and
social action. Advocates of social action consistently
write-down the chances of professional action ever
achieving a level of militancy needed to destroy the
structures of oppression, and advocates of professional practice see no role for direct action in their
concept of service.
Social work has had its share of this debate over
the years, with the pendulum swinging between
social action and social service. Despite the current
Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4 3
fixation of social work within a neo-conservative
paradigm, the proponents of social action maintain
a presence, both marginal and tenacious, within the
social work community (Davis 1991; Moreau et al.
1993; Burke 1996; Kervan, Ploenges, Lobert &
O’Keefe 1996; Carniol 1996). The endurability of
activism within human service professions is not
unique of course to social work.
Psychology, of all professions, is currently visiting this site afresh and debating whether it should
have an activist role. In late 1995 the Australian
Psychological Society Bulletin published an article
entitled ‘Should the APS have an Ethical Code of
Action?’ (Davidson & Sanson 1995, pp.2-4). I
doubt whether Davidson’s and Sanson’s question
will be imminently resolved in the affirmative,
considering psychology’s non-negotiable concept
of itself as a science. The success or failure of the
activist debate in psychology is however secondary
to the fact that it was ever considered in the first
place. That it was indicates a restlessness, a growing dissatisfaction with the exclusion of activism
from the definition of psychology. This dissatisfaction is supported on a table with many legs; one of
them being the realisation that psychological health
cannot be maintained in conditions of social deterioration and structural inequality.
Thankfully social work, on the whole, has
stopped fooling itself that it is a science, and can
consider the question of social action free of the
Aristotelian dualism between ethics and science
that shackles the debate in psychology (De Maria
I982).’ While the question within social work
about how far (if at all) it should go in embracing
social action proceeds free of the ethics-science
dualism, there are no expressway conditions to the
resolution of this issue. This is because social work
is assailed by an equally insidious contradiction to
the one that bests psychology.
This contradiction gathers around the role-question: do we serve the people through the state, or do
we serve the state through the people? Mainstream
social work proclaims that we do both and considers the moral conflicts that flow from this as a fact
of life. The activist voice says that we only do the
latter. This conflict, an ontological one I suppose, is
much bigger than social work, so resolution of it is
beyond the elective choice of the professional community.
That social work cannot resolve the state v
humanitarianism contradiction is quite a serious
matter. It could actually lead to the moral collapse
of social work in the swelling ranks of disillusioned clients and equally disaffected social workers. In the meantime social workers in their daily
practice must constantly deal with the fall-out from
this chronic contradiction in the form of maze-like
accountability routes, role confusion, and conflicting expectations from the state and the client
world.
The second issue that needs to be identified here
relates to the central argument, soon to be presented, that the AASW Code of Ethics ignores a
minority class of social workers. It may be that the
relationship between the majority of social workers
and the Code is one of mutual disregard too. There
is a trickle of research that explores whether social
workers use their associations’ codes as moral
lighthouses to guide them around difficult ethical
matters. That evidence suggests that they do not
(Banks 1990, p. 100). In a small study in Atlanta
Georgia, Holland and Kilpatrick interviewed 27
social workers to learn how ethical issues are
understood and dealt with. They concluded;
It is instructive to note that not a single respondent offered the profession’s code of ethics as a
resource for helping to deal with complex ethical issues…most participants expressed a
poignant sense of loneliness and isolation in
their struggle with moral questions (Holland
Kilpatrick 1991, p.140). (emphasis added).
If Holland and Kilpatrick have micro-viewed
the big picture of code-impotency common
throughout the international social work community, then we can tentatively deduce that social
workers (licensed or not) do not take the current
codification of professional ethics seriously. This
problem may be solvable through renewable and
reviewable practice licences, better code-rnarketing, a higher educative and supervisory profile for
the National Committee for Ethics and Professional Standards, and more emphasis on code-education of social work students. The issue of ethical
disenfranchisement of a minority of activist social
workers is however an entirely different matter,
and is certainly not addressed by such strategies.
The paper proceeds on the footing that while the
AASW Code and general social work practice may
be seriously estranged, the focus will be on a specific fonn of estrangement; that between activist
social workers and the Code.
Long ideologically separated and marginalised,
activist social workers conduct their radical or
structural practice with the knowledge that they are
also ethically disenfranchised from their profession
by the wording and the thrust of the AASW Code.
A similar observation has recently been made
about the British probation service. Nellis’s discontent about probation values being overlooked in
social work’s fatal attraction towards genericism,
has sparked a renewed call for secession (Nellis
1995, p.189). This paper does not go that far,
although formal secession of activist social workers is a logical response to ethical disenfranchisement. Ethical marginalisation is driven with the
fuel of sc)-called core values.
4 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4
CORE VALUERTHE THREADBARE
CURTAIN OF UNITY
The AASW Code asserts in its Preamble that it
identified practice standards ‘which adequately
reflect the value base of the profession’ (AASW
Code of Ethics 1994, p.1). Note the singular case
for ‘value base’. Re-asserted here is an enduring
but thoroughly discredited structural-functionalist
fantasy that human systems galvanise around unitary values (Thursz 1996). Like a violence-tom
home that presents like the Partridge family in public, the Code hides the grandest secret of them all;
that social work is a conflictual professional community with no ethical centre. If the feminist critique of mainstream social work in the 1980s did
not reveal the absence of an ethical centre
(Marchant & Wearing 1986; Dominelli & McLeod
1989), the predicted racial critique by Aboriginal
social workers certainly will (Ewalt & Mokuau
1995; Drower 1996; Thorpe et al. 1996).’ Glossing
over all this important turmoil is a farce in two acts
in which the AASW, through the Code, asserts a
unitary value base for social work and generations
of students get that message drilled into them, yet
the Australian Association for Social Work and
Welfare Education (AASWWE) continues to
scratch its head and say that it really does not know
what social work is! (AASWWE 1996, p.6). That
most of this conflict and confusion is suppressed
behind a curtain of unity is testimony in part to the
unspoken strength of the ideology of liberalism, the
moral force which continues to dominate the philosophical ground of Australian social work.
The persistent belief in an ethical centre or core
values is not just an exercise in ethical monopoly.
There is something more oppressive at work here.
Core values speak of ethical supremacy
(Beauchamp & Bowie 1993, p.33; Hinman 1994,
p.345). Those values at the ‘core’ are too readily
regarded as axioms or everlasting truths, when they
are nothing more than now-dominant moral
hypotheses basking in the refracted power and
privilege of liberalism (Smyth & Campbell 1996,
p.78). The core value approach to social work
codes of ethics has attracted a good deal of criticism, a lot of it apparently falling on deaf ears
(Timms 1983, p.2; Hugman & Smith 1995, p.2).
While the AASW’s assertion of a unitary value
base normally goes un-challenged, and cumcula
‘reforms’ in social work departments tread softly
over the hallowed ground of core values, this is not
the case in other parts of the world.
For example the civil war conditions in Northem Ireland make the achievement of cross-border
social work value-consensus very problematic, if
indeed impossible (Darby & Williamson 1978;
Boa1 & Douglas 1983; Ditch & Monisey 1992;
Smyth & Campbell 1996). The civil war in Northem Ireland replays in bold and dramatic relief the
same cross-ideological currents that exist in Australia. Two definite and antagonistic moral systems
are at work in Northern Ireland. Moral divisiveness
and conflict is not just the context for social work
in Northern Ireland, it is its very nature. Thus
‘green’ and ‘orange’ forms of social work reflect in
their troubled co-existence the broader ProtestantCatholic battleground (Burgess 1993). To insinuate
the core-value fantasy into this moral conflict (as
often happens) is to attack the worth and separate
histories of the contending positions. Recently
Mitchel McLaughlin, a senior Sinn Fein figure
said:
There is no middle ground, only the extremes,
the trick is to push the extreme into the middle
ground (Courier Mud, 12 October 1996).
Whether we agree with McLaughlin’s position
or not is irrelevant, this is the grand starting point
in all moral conflict, including civil wars. This is
what must be engaged with. To ignore this very
real conflict by an appeal to peace, is to circumvent
this engagement and chase the core-values fantasy.
Similarly as social work shares in the struggle to
develop a post-apartheid South Africa the issue of
ethical units is receiving a good deal of critical
attention:
… the profession of social work reflects the
confllicling value systems at play in the broader
social context. In South Africa a spectrum of
social work associations have in the past and
continue in the present to mirror the different
value positions in wider South African society
(Drower 1996, p. 138). (emphasis added).
However the transition has spawned a call for
ethical units, which according to Drower, fails to
appreciate the importance of socio-political diversity (Drower 1996, p.138). To date, the most vocal
calls for AASW-type unity in South Africa have
come from the privileged white majority of social
workers who constitute only 14% of the population
(Drower 1996, p. 138).
So an article such as this, cannot avoid a critique
of the core-value myth. The paper will develop this
critique in the following way: the notion of ethical
disenfranchisement will be introduced through a
“Thisanalysis will suggest that the Code,
as presently set up, is not a locus of moral
authority for the activist sociul worker. ”
consideration of relevant parts of the Code. This
analysis will suggest that the Code, as presently set
up, is not a locus of moral authority for the activist
social worker. Some of the worst welfare atrocities
Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4 5
committed in Australia in the last 50 years are
noted in order to pose the question: could these
atrocities have been prevented, or at the very least
ameliorated by Code-condoned interventions by
social workers? This paper adopts the view that the
question is answerable in the negative; that acts of
oppression and atrocity caiznot be prevented by
social workers acting ethically (as understood
within the Code).
To anticipate the argument in a small way, it
could be argued that a (sympathetic) reading of the
Code demonstrates an ethical resistance to oppression and atrocity. But no amount of indulgent deciphering will identify ethical approval for the strategies of direct action which are sorely needed to
challenge oppression and atrocity. Take one example, the direct action strategy of civil disobedience;
the refusal to be governed by unjust laws and procedures (Pegis 1945, pp.787-788,793-797). This is
not specified in the Code. It does not have to be to
sustain my argument. The fact is that no direct
action strategies are specified. The counter could
be that codes set ethical standards and it would be
inappropriate to nominate ways of meeting these
standards. But the AASW Code does this. It sets
down for example the strategy of effecting
‘…changethrough appropriate organisational channels’ (AASW Code of Ethics 1994, p.3). More
shall be said about this shortly. The point here is
that by endorsing system-confirming strategies
such as working through formal channels, the Code
not only reflects the dominant conservative nature
of social work, it also marginalises activist social
workers, who know from hard won experience that
‘appropriate channels’ in the struggle for eniancipation rarely exist. Perhaps worst of all is the
charge that the Code’s strategic conservatism actually makes it artefactual to oppression. The fact
that i t does not endorse direct action, as already
observed, is proof of this. Rather than it being a
code of engagement, it is a code of so-called ‘conduct’. Conduct codes expect high levels of professional niceness and decorum despite the macropicture often being one of brutality and barbarity.
By not focusing on oppression the Code becomes
artefactual to it.
Let one example carry this point. One of our
greatest sources of sham, and something that future
Australians will know and judge us by is our
almost complete failure to protect institutionalised
people from negligent care and atrocity. Australians continue to be harmed and die at the hands
of ‘carers’ in warehouses for the disabled and in
psychiatric asylums (‘hospitals’, ‘centres’,
‘homes’, are euphemisms in this continuing context of violence). Within this context of violence a
pernicious pattern keeps on revealing itself
i) Psychiatric harm and disabled abuse continues for many years, perpetrated, or at least witnessed by staff, who in other parts of their contradictory-ridden lives are exemplary citizens.
ii) Finally some person, an employee of conscience, or the victim’s friend or relative,
braves the hostile work culture and makes a
disclosure in the public interest. These people
usually start suffering organisational recriminations almost immediately.
iii) Previously indifferent administrations, no
longer able to quell the growing tide of evidence of abuse are forced to set up official
investigations.
iv) Perpetrators and their defenders, particularly the lawyers they buy and the professional
associations and unions that they belong to,
immediately go into cover-up and counterattack mode.
v) Most of these investigations are stacked
against complainants and victims, and work
backwards to clear the organisation and the
culprits within it of wrongdoing.
vi) Every so often a dedicated and un-intimidated investigator brings the truth out, exposes
the atrocities, and recommends sensible and
long overdue corrective action to government.
vii) The heat goes out of the issue at the same
rate that dust gathers on the investigator’s
report.
End of story, until a new atrocity emerges and
the cycle of violence, denial and token reform
starts over again. These elements have made up a11
the known psychiatric atrocities and disahle abuses
in the last 30 years (De Maria 1996~). The power
locked up in this pattern easily eclipses whatever
moral outrage and socio-political pressure could
ever emanate from the AASW Code.
These charges are presented through a consideration and critique of what will be described as the
proto-Kantian foundations of the Code (Webb &
McBeath 1989). This is followed by an appeal to
re-jig the Code around the concept of power rather
than around the ragbag assortment of values such
as individual dignity and social justice. Foucault
makes a brief entry into my argument at this stage
because his power-focused analysis can ethically
arm social workers involved in social action.
A case study is then presented to illustrate the
dangers of proceeding without a power-focused
analysis. It deals with a social worker who stood up
for moral standards and was cut down by management appropriating the language of ethics. Francine
Waltzing was dismissed for being ‘unethical’ when
all she was doing was being a highly responsible
and accountable activist. In terms of the Code’s
very obvious ethical boycott of direct action, this
social worker had nowhere to go when she got into
6 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4
trouble. In the idiom of the title she was ‘flapping
on clipped wings’. The paper ends with a consideration of an ethic of activism.
ETHICAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT
Certainly the flag of social justice flutters
over the AASW Code. In fact it is in the Code’s
Preamble:
The achievement of social justice is thus coequal with the attainment of fulfilment for the
individual (AASW Code of Ethics 1994, p.1)
3.1 Commitment to Social Justice
The social worker will advocate for changes in
policy, service delivery and social conditions
which enhance the opportunities for these most
vulnerable in the community (AASW Code of
Ethics 1994, p. 1).
Yet when activist social workers follow this flag
of social justice down its pole they find that it is
stuck atop a castle of rhetorical sand. How can the
Code support activist social work when it places
meta-ethical value on objective knowledge, self
determination, unique dignity, self fulfilment, and
as already mentioned, a unitary value base?
(AASW Code of Ethics 1994, pp.1-2).
These are the building blocks of professional
empowerment and problem-focused practice; they
are not the materials of direct action, resistance and
dissent. Social justice then is an ideal too casually
grafted onto the Code’s pre-eminent (and conflicting) interest in the individual.
Value contradiction in codes of ethics appears to
be an international social work phenomenon. Jordan notes this in the ‘list’ of values produced by the
Central Council for Education and Training in
Social Work (CCETSW) (Jordan 1991; Banks
1995). He identified a massive contradiction
between Biestek-type homilies such as self-determination in the first part of the list and the statements about structural oppression in the latter part
(Biestek 1961; CCETSW 1989). Jordan argues that
the traditional social work values are amongst the
strongest defences of the privileges of wealth,
whiteness, and maleness: three of the dominant
bases of structural oppression. Banks says that Jordan’s analysis:
… reasserts the point that social workers in the
radical tradition [make]; that the agenda of
structural change conflicts with the individualistic promises upon which social work is based
(Banks 1995, p.38).
This conflict’ has also been identified in the
Canadian social work code (Lundy & Gauthier
1989).
Back to the Australian Code, one must ask how
can it support activist social work when it emphasises this practice standard:
It is also the Code’s first practice principle:
4.3 Relationship with Employing Organisation
As an employee, the social worker will recognise the stated aims of the organisation, contribute to the development of its policy…
(AASW Code of Ethics 1994, p.3).
That’s all very well. But what if the organisation
was Chelmsford Hospital (of the 1970s), Ward 10B
Townsville General Hospital (of the 1980s), Kew
Cottages (before the fire), the Brisbane Basil
Stafford Centre (before the Stewart Inquiry), Peat
Island (before the NSW government inquiry),
Hillview Juvenile Psychiatric Unit in Perth (before
the official investigation) or the Challinor Centre at
Ipswich (Queensland Advocacy Inc. 1996; De
Maria 1996c), Baillie-Henderson Psychiatric Hospital at Toowoomba (Koch 1996, p.1; Hammond
1996, p.9; De Maria 1996c, p.1) and the Woodstock facility at Albury, all of which were recently
under investigation?
Take the Chelmsford Hospital example. Under
the guise of cutting-edge psychiatry, a private hospital in a leafy upper-class suburb of Sydney was
transformed into a living morgue, as hundreds of
people were given deep-sleep therapy that had
been banned in the USA twenty years before. It is
hard to grasp the extent of damage done to these
people’s lives. Numerous investigations were met
with numerous cover-ups. A royal commission,
and a High Court case never got within cooee of
punishing the perpetrators. The process simply
went into deep-sleep itself, ready to be activated by
the next atrocity (De Maria 1996~).
We did not have to wait long for that. The worst
psychiatric atrocity in Australia since colonial
times was unfolding in Townsville at Ward 10B.
The Carter Inquiry, established despite an enormous amount of opposition, concluded that 65
Queenslanders who had been in Ward IOB had
‘died in circumstances that justified close investigation’. There was no ‘close investigation’, no
charges were laid, and worse, some of the key players went on to bigger and better things. Some may
have thought that this could never happen again.
Little did they know that the Basil Stafford atrocity
was just warming up. A whistleblower-stimulated
Criminal Justice Commission inquiry by Mr Justice
Stewart generated 6000 pages of transcript and
concluded that there were residential care officers
at the Brisbane centre who were in Stewart’s words
‘…a disgrace to the human race’. Among other
crimes a 22 year old female with a mental age of a
five year old, and suffering from micro-encephala
was raped by her ‘carer’, became pregnant and
gave birth to a baby also with micro-encephala. All
the elements in the pattern previously considered
came into play; aggressive union defence of the
perpetrators, obstructionist tactics by lawyers, holAustralian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4 I
low gestures of reform, and buck-passing. In a preemptive move the previous Goss Labor Government closed the Basil Stafford centre before Mr
Justice Stewart reported and re-opened it after the
inquiry finished. Mr Justice Stewart returned to
Brisbane recently for a seminar at Gnffith University where he expressed his complete disappointment at the lack of official response to his recommendations.
All these organisations referred to above hurt,
damaged or killed people, and in or around all
these organisations fully paid up members of the
Australian Association of Social Workers either
heard about or saw evil. Yet none of these social
workers (or other professionals for that matter)
came forward to report the abuse and demand a
stop to the atrocities until it was too late.
Clearly there are many reasons, both personal
and structural, why social workers and other professionals rarely disclose wrongdoing (De Maria
1995b, p.3; McConkey, Huon & Frank 1996,p.19).
The point here is that this moral inertia can seek
ethical refuge behind weak codes. For example the
first part of Practice Standard 4.3 sets down in brief
hut very clear language, the industrial obligations
of the employee-social worker. One does not have
to resort to the dramatic examples of organisational
atrocities cited above to expose the weakness in the
Practice Standard. By issuing the moral direction to
social workers to ‘recognise’ agency goals and
‘contribute’ to policy development (see Horvath
letter below) the Code fails to acknowledge that
social welfare organisations can, and frequently do,
act malevolently. It also fails to acknowledge the
increasingly despotic industrial atmosphere in
which social workers toil, and it also fails to recognise a minority of social workers who hold a
greater allegiance to extra-organisational sources
of morality. Additionally, there is the failure to
recognise the importance of facing meandends
conflicts in welfare organisations.
Brief mention can be made of research which
continues to confirm the willingness of certain
employees to be guided by values that do not
emanate from the workplace (Blumberg 1971; Perrucci et al. 1980; Graham 1986; Miceli & Near
1986; De Maria & Jan 1994 Part D). In the workplace these people are permanently vulnerable, as
they will often be in deep and non-negotiable value
conflict with their organisation. If the profession of
social work ever gets around to recognising this
ethical minority as well as recognising the value of
social conflict, we could see Practice Standard 4.3
re-written:
As a social worker expect to conflict with your
employer’s vision of the organisation. If such a
conflict is dedicated to achieving humanitarian
outcomes then you are ethically obliged to so
act, with the assurance of support from the
AASW.
Even emulating the strident tones of the
Swedish Union of Social Workers would be a step
in the right direction here;
The professional responsibilities of the social
worker are not limited to her own place of
work. the social worker shares the responsibility with other social workers to strive for the
fulfilment of the values laid down in the ethical
guidelines for professional social work. the
responsibility is neither limited to their own
national society, the country. Wheresoever
social and other injustices occur, the social
worker has a responsibility to fight them.
(Swedish Union of Social Workers 1991,
p.viii).
Another problem with Practice Standard 4.3 is
that it can actually legitimate organisational attacks
on dissenting social workers, who, if they do not
‘…recognise the stated aims…and contribute…to
policy’, can very quickly expose themselves to
harassment, redeployment and dismissal. It is also
possible (though not probable) that these renegade
social workers can be cited by the National Ethics
Committee of the AASW for violation of the existing Code (Murray & Swain 1996). To justify that I
have not taken these points too far let me proceed
to the next part of Practice Standard 4.3
The Standard goes on to say that if the employing organisation’s policies or procedures contravene professional standards (undefined) then:
…the social worker will endeavour to effect
change through appropriate organisation
channels (AASW Code of Ethics 1994, p.3)
(emphasis added).
What an interesting euphemism this phrase
‘appropriateorganisation channels’ is! As we get to
understand through whistleblower and dissenter
research the form and content of appropriate
organisation channels the more we understand that
they are not flow-easy conduits from wrongdoing
to correction. Rather, they are usually obstructionist devices engineered by those in power to absorb
critique and expose the outspoken social worker
(Austrin 1994; Rothschild & Miethe 1994; De
Maria & Jan 1996; De Maria 1996a). The social
worker profiled in this paper used ‘appropriate
channels’ to her great personal and professional
detriment.
The Code goes on to say that if these ‘channels’
don’t work the social worker can seek support from
the AASW. It would be interesting to know
whether activist social workers have ever taken this
step; and if they did, what the AASW did next.
Given that the AASW at the federal and state levels
has a long tradition of organisational laryngitis
when it comes to speaking out in the public inter-
8 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4
est, the answer appears obvious.
The Code finalises this point on conflictual relationships with employing authorities by giving its
blessing to social workers who take their case ‘…to
other groups or the wider community’ (AASW
Code of Ethics 1994, p.3). I wonder if the drafters
of this position realised what a dangerous suggestion this is. Social workers should go public with
their concerns. Under present conditions in the
workplace (again see Horvath letter below), along
with the reluctance of the AASW to come to the
aid of its activist members, doing so is usually the
occupational version of harakiri (De Maria & Jan
1994; De Maris 1996a).
Current social work research appears to corroborate this position. Rothschild and Miethe were
allowed to examine the archival records on grievance cases held by the National Association of
Social Workers in America (Rothschild & Miethe
1994, ~ . 2 5 3 ) . ~ These cases concerned ethics violations in agencies (Berliner 1989). After reviewing
the cases the researchers identified and made field
notes on 12 cases of whistleblowing. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with six
social workers and a further 36 who had exposed
agency misconduct completed a ten page survey.
On reflecting on their results Rothschild and
Miethe said:
Often, what we find is that once employees
reveal that they possess and might use information that challenges management’s judgement, the full resources of the organisation
will be brought to bear against them, no matter
how out of proportion it might appear to the
observer…There can be no question (based on
our interviews) that the severe retaliation suffered by these people is devastating. Marriages
break down under the stress…Female whistleblowers speak with tremendous pain of how
they ‘could not be there for their children’
throughout the long months or years in which
they were consumed by their own battle for
vindication (Rothschild & Miethe 1994,
p.267).
Cases also abound in Australia about social
workers experiencing massive management
hatched vendettas as a result of making a stand
(Harari 1995; Crawford 1995; De Maria 1996a).
Cases are also being collected now about the plight
of academic social workers who experience
reprisals after acting in a way consistent with Practice Standard 4.3 (third paragraph) (De Maria
1996b).
By not issuing health warnings with respect to
Practice Standard 4.3, the AASW exposes itself to
the charge of offering a sub-standard duty of care
to its membership.
The final section of the Code says:
The social worker will maintain co-operative
relationships with other members of other professions and staff engaged in providing services to the client (AASW Code of Ethics
Again one must ask is this a maintain-at-all costs
injunction? If not, under what conditions are social
workers released from what appears to be an ethical
direction? Similarly social workers who were
knowledgeable about the atrocities at Peat Island
and the Basil Stafford Centre could well read this
section as subtly idealising inter-professional relationships at the expense of dissent in the public
interest (Criminal Justice Commission 1995; NSW
Department of Community Services 1996).
The Code then appears to be an appropriate
piece of sanctimony for those who practice safely
in the system-affirming modalities of casework,
case-management, mediation, research, private
practice and consultation. In fact a stranger could
be forgiven for reading the Code and thinking that
social work is a profession of suite-dwelling feesetters in private practice.
1994, p.4).
“There is another side to the profession;
the activist side. ”
There is another side to the profession; the activist
side. The disenfranchising nature of the Code
means that the activist practitioner must find ethical guidance and support from sources outside the
profession because the Code does not endorse
direct action at the operational level.
Any social work code can endorse the principles
of direct action. The AASW Code for example preambles on about the achievement of social justice
and being an advocatefor change. However it is an
entirely different matter for the profession to go the
extra distance and ethically sponsor direct action at
the operational level. If being an advocate for
change involves a program of civil disobedience
can the activist seek shelter in the Code? If the
achievement of social justice involves a covert
operation of leaking government documents,
breaching a secrecy enactment, or organising a
media expos6 of corrupt welfare officials, will the
Code help when the activist is under counterattack? Can the Code respond to the social worker,
who after taking certain direct action, is judged by
peers and clients as morally right and judged by the
state as legally wrong? The short answer is no.
The Horvath letter serves to illustrate this point.
On 22 August 1996 Dr Diana Horvath, the CEO
for the Central Sydney Area Health Service
(CSAHS) wrote to Concord Hospital staff
Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4 9
I wish to bring to your attention the following:
A) Every employee has a duty of good faith
and fidelity to hisher employer, with the consequence being that any conduct by an
employee, including public criticism of the
B) Every employee is obliged to obey all lawful directions given by the employer…Disobedience of a lawful direction or order may…justify the termination of the employee.
C) There are well established and available
mechanisms by which staff members can air
grievances and express their opinions in opposition to decisions taken, or proposed to be
taken, by the employer (a position, as already
observed, fully supported in the AASW Code
of Ethics)…
Both the Area Board and myself are in no
doubt that the recent activities of some Concord staff members constitute serious breaches
of the obligations referred to in (a) and (b)
above and, accordingly, I now wish to make it
abundantly clear that the Area does not intend
to tolerate in future any behaviour € o m any
member of the staff at Concord that is inconsistent with those obligations and so obviously
contrary to the best interests of the Area as a
whole.
Whilst I do not intend currently to act on past
breaches of these obligations I shall have no
hesitation in the future of taking appropriate
action where the rights of the employer and the
obligations of the employee are transgressed.
For the convenience of staff I attach a copy of
the CSAHS Code of Conduct. (Horvath 1996)
(emphasis added).
This type of direction is becoming more common in the workplace, where one finds increasing
pressure to submit dissent to the chain of command, and to desist from organised action around
public interest issues. A new proposal, for example, would allow consumers of services withheld or
interrupted through a strike, to sue the relevant
union (Dorrell 1996). In the midst of all this the
AASW Code slumbers in professional gentility.
How could the Code respond to the constant
problem of organisation-focused values overpowering client-focused values? One way could be the
codification of conscientious objection. Not only
would this be an enfranchising service to activist
social workers, the general social work community
could benefit too. To be specific, the Code could
carry a provision approving conscientious objection by AASW members who are hard pressed by
management to embrace, concur or participate in
something against the public interest. If the social
worker suffers reprisals as a result of refusing to
work unethically, courts may protect them as long
a ground for dismissal.
as the strategy of conscientious objection is codified, and the code incorporates public policy.
American courts have considered this matter more
than their Australian counterparts. The New Jersey
Supreme Court in Pierce v Ortho Pharmaceutical
Corporation considered the case of a physician
(Pierce) who was employed as the director of medical research with the Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation, a manufacturer of therapeutic and reproductive drugs. Pierce claimed that she was dismissed
because she refused to support the development of
a drug designed to combat diarrhoea in children
and older people. She objected because she
believed that a component of the new drug was
harmful. She cited the Hippocratic Oath as moral
ground for her resistance. The court said:
In certain cases, a professional code of ethics
may contain an expression of public policy
(public interest)…Employees who are professionals owe a special duty not only to abide by
federal and state law, but also by the recognised code of their profession. That duty may
oblige them to decline to perform ucts required
by their employers. (Pierce v Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation 1980, pp.7 1-72) (Emphasis added).
The next section attempts to explain why the
present AASW Code could not get to this position
without a major overhaul.
KANT’S CODE OR FOUCAULT’S FOLLY?
…social work should throw out its redundant
[Kantian] ethical baggage, and concentrate on
the political relationships that are implicit in
social work.
So starts one of the more forceful attacks on the
dominant paradigm of social work ethics seen in
years (Webb & McBeath 1989, p.492). While
Webb & McBeath base their arguments on the code
of ethics produced by the British Association of
Social Workers and the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (BASW 1975;
CCETSW 1976), the ideological distance between
these documents and the Australian Code is so
slight as to cause no extrapolation problems. The
authors call €or a framework change in social work
based on the work of the French philosopher and
historian Michel Foucault, in order to give social
workers:
…a critical understanding of the sinews and
interstices of power which relate social workers to their clients, other professional bodies,
voluntary agencies, policy makers, legislators
and central government… (Webb & McBeath
1989, p.492).
Long neglected, if not consciously abandoned,
power is returning as a concept able to critically
assess the social work experience in a way that pos-
10 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4
itively anticipates social action. Speaking recently
of the emergence of anti-racist and anti- discrimination social work practice (ARADP) in the United
Kingdom, Smyth & Campbell follow McBeath &
Webb’s lead by stating:
The emergence of ARADP has allowed the
profession to begin to re-investigate the relationship within and between dichotomies [neutrality-partiality; personal-political; individual
agency-structural determination] which exists,
in any case, regardless of inspection. What this
debate can offer is the opportunity for social
workers to discuss relationships of power
which exist between themselves, their clients
and the state, in a way that was stifled by
assumptions about core-values. Thus the discussion moves beyond the traditional concerns
about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practice [still a fixated
concern with the AASW Code, see Murray &
Swain 19961 (and consequently about ‘good’
and ‘bad’ social workers) towards the more
complex, and symbiotic relationships between
one profession and the society it serves (Smyth
& Campbell 1996, p.79) (emphasis added).
Smyth & Campbell finish this passage by saying
that it remains to be seen how much United Kingdom society wishes social work to critically engage
with social problems and issues of social justice.
Mainstream Australian social work is not at the
stage of posing this question. It is not even at the
stage of considering the merits of a power-focus.
So on this issue we take our lead from United
Kingdom writers like McBeath & Webb who
strongly argue that this power-focus will;
…render otiose social work’s Kantian liberal,
neutral, and individualistic moral theory of the
subject (person) (Webb & McBeath 1989,
p.492).
Webb & McBeath develop rather than initiate an
attack of social work’s Kantian colour. Social
work’s radical scholarship has long maintained a
strong critique of the powerful individualistic ethic.
Hugman and Smith provide a useful summary of
where that critique focused:
It may be argued that the ‘individualisation’
which Biestek claimed as central to social
work ethics was important in that it emphasised the status of the client as a unique person,
with the rights and claims which that entails.
However the radical social work argument is
critical of this as taking the individual out of
context. What the materialist framework of
radical social work points to is rather the location of human individuality in various groups
formed by divisions within society of which
the most usual instance was [was?] class. In
these terms ethics must be built not on the
assumption of a general humanity, but a
humanity that is divided within current social
structures (Hugman & Smith 1995, p.6)
(emphasis added).
The same position can be adopted with respect
to the Australian Code. The AASW Code continues to perpetuate the old myth of professional apoliticality. The very first section of the Code says:
Social work has its origins in a number of
sources, humanitarian, religious, and philosophical (AASW Code of Ethics 1994, p.1).
This highly selective view of social work history
not only leaves out social work’s strong pedigree of
control, it also de-emphasises the long struggle for
welfare rights. The political context of social work
is, in other words, left out in favour of what Webb
& McBeath call the ‘illusion of moral commitment’. In this illusion moral views and taught
ethics transcend hard-won political insights into
the exercise of power.
Webb & McBeath say that the United Kingdom
code has Kantian presuppositions. In his Groundwork to a Metaphysics of Morals Kant persuasively
argues that the human capacity for reason makes us
individual and equal (Kant 1785). Kant’s position
is typical of the Enlightenment – era celebration of
the thinking individual; a radical dogma in its day,
now a foregone conclusion in our liberalist society.
Webb & McBeath err in identifying a Kantian
monopoly here. It would have been more accurate
to settle in the legacy of a range of liberalist
thinkers including John Locke and J.S.MiII. From
the capacity for a tradition-free ability to ponder, to
design, flows the notion of individuality and equality between the individualities. This entails autonomy and respect for others. Webb & McBeath continue:
Social work’s ethical language is that of respect
for persons. However, a social worker’s knowledge, capacities and statutory powers as they
are deployed over a client show limited respect
for the client as possessing rationality and
equality (Webb & McBeath 1989, p.494).
At the beginning of the Australian Code the
value statements refer to the same injunction to
respect others, through the Code’s emphasis on
unique dignity (value statement 1) and se(f-fu(filment (value statement 3) (AASW Code of Ethics
1194, p.1). We need to go further with Webb &
McBeath’s analysis. They have in effect simply
raised the old (but valid) chestnut that social workers do not practice what they preach. Rather, they
like other professionals, work in a world of moral
hypocrisy (McConkey, Huon, & Frank 1996, P.v.).
In extending this debate we need to consider the
nature of the conflicts between professional and
organisational values.
Unique dignity and self-fulfilment are clear
examples of one class of moral precepts i n the
Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4 1 1
Code. They can be called the client-focused precepts. There is another class of equally forceful
moral constructs in the Code. These are what I call
the work-focused precepts (organisational values).
As clear example of this is the abovementioned
Practice Standard 4.3:Relationships with Employer
Organisations. The question is; are client-focused
and work-focused precepts contradictory? The
recent child protection controversy in Victoria
shows that they are.
The Kennett Government was accused of exposing children to harm in a damning report released
on 20 June 1996. The report was tabled in parliament by the Victorian Auditor-General Mr. Chas
Baragwanath. He found that ‘serious deficiencies
throughout the state’s child protection system had
resulted in preventable harm to children’ (Austruliui7, 21 June 1996). This client-focused report
was soon in trouble. Six days later senior members
of the Victorian judiciary launched what was
described as an ‘extraordinary personal attack on
the Auditor-General’ (Australian, 26 June 1996).
He was described as ‘incompetent’ and his report
as ‘ignorant’. There is reason to believe that the
judiciary’s attack was condoned at the highest levels of the Victorian government. The attack is consistent with the work-focused precepts mentioned
above.
A point easily missed in the analysis here is that
client-focused precepts and work-focused precepts
are inherently contradictory. This is because they
originate from different sources of authority.
Client-focused precepts have moraf origins while
work-focused precepts have legal ones. Further,
the natural conflict between client and work values
is mystified as the latter is often expressed with
language appropriated from the former; the workvalues wolf in ethical sheep’s clothing in other
words. The colonisation by work-values onto the
ethical landscape puts the organisational world
view in a doubly powerful position. Not only do
work-precepts enjoy legal-coercive authority, they
also benefit from their appearance as morally correct.
A common position in social work thinking is to
acknowledge the contradictory nature of professional value-practice structures and proceed to
‘work out’ the contradictions on a case by case
basis, agency by agency basis. These conflicts do
not get ‘worked out’ as much as one (organisational) overwhelms the other (professional).
Fuelling this ethical power imbalance is the long
understood insight that the higher the rank the
greater the personal commitment to organisational
values (McConkey, Huon & Frank 1996, p.vi).
Albeit the picture being painted is a grim one; a
permanent transcendence of organisational values
over professional values. For some fields of practice it may already be too late; the transcendence is
complete. The fields of health and corrections
come to mind. In both these fields pro-organisational frameworks (medical model and the punishment model respectively) dominate. This domination is so powerful, so complete that we are entitled
to our pessimism about practising any form of
social work in these fields, failing a complete reframing.
THE FRANCINE WALTZING CASE6
She seems to me to have an overlydeveloped
sense ojright and wrong
The person referred to in this extract from a
manager’s statement is a social worker who was
dismissed in 1995. Francine Waltzing’s view of the
matter is that she was dismissed for being an
activist. Much can be said about the stealth and
duplicity of her church employer but the focus will
be on how Code-based ethical judgements can be
used as part of the strike-force against activist
social workers.
Francine was a social worker in a Special Needs
Team (SNT) which consisted of herself, a manager
(Paul Ferry) and a residential care officer. The team
was responsible for the supervision of a supported
accommodation program and a respite facility for
30 clients and their families (Document I).
At the time that Francine entered the agency’s
employ it was experiencing a move towards central
control. Waltzing said of this:
Of greatest concern was that the team’s job of
servicing clients became a near impossible task
as authorisation from the executive had to be
obtained for almost every routine
function…Hence, crucial decision making
processes were taken away from…clients [by]
executives who had never met a person with a
disability…(Document 1).
Within the context of managerial usurpation of‘
client power, Waltzing and her colleagues saw patterns of wrongdoing emerging:
Ultimately it was the team’s concern that funding allocated to meet the personal care needs of
clients with severe and multiple disabilities
(allocated on the basis of the number of support hours needed by each client each day) was
being mis-used to fund executive cars, salaries
and luncheons). For example [Ferry]
notes…that the SNT made up only 3% of the
total size of the [agency], yet the [agency] was
siphoning off almost $90000 pa of client funds
to other areas of service (Document I).
Attendant on the alleged corrupt accounting was
a series of staff cut-backs that Waltzing attributes
to the death of at least one client burned in a hot
water bath (Document I).
The SNT became further concerned with the
1 2 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. S O , No. 4
appointment of a clinical supervisor. The team’s
recommendations for the position were ignored
and a person was appointed without a selection
process. To the team this appeared as a nepotistic
appointment as the person was a friend of the
director (Document I). On this matter Paul Ferry,
Francine’s line manager, wrote:
If Joan had not been personally known to the
Director, she would not have been
appointed…into a position for which she was
neither suited or qualified…If Joan had worked
for the SNT her probation would have been
extended…and she would have been provided
with a letter of unsatisfactory service (Document I).
Following a series of failed attempts over many
months to get the agency to improve services, the
SNT decided to report the agency to the major government funder (Document I). Francine Waltzing
commented:
When I made contact with the Department to
request information about what it was prepared
to do (e.g. re-negotiate the funding agreement
etc…) it did nothing but breach all its own confidentiality policies by reporting me to [my]
executive that contact was made with them
(Document I).
Ironically, at that time the funding department
was running a public ‘Have A Say’ campaign
encouraging people to speak out about unfair, discriminating or dehumanising practices within disabilities services. Waltzing’s reflection of this was:
I [now] have no doubt that such a campaign is
dangerous, and used (if not designed) to draw
people out into the open where they can be
identified and slaughtered without trial (Document I).
When Waltzing complained to the state manager
of the funding department she was told that the
department only has one obligation and that is to
the service agency.
By now Waltzing was on a dismissal track,
although she did not know it at the time:
[Reporting the agency] was the single most
significant event that in time [led] to my
removal. I was not prepared to stay quiet about
what I believed to be a gross misuse of power
and authority and [a] denial and abuse of client
rights and they [agency management] knew
it…1 couldn’t have imagined the lengths that
they were prepared to go to destroy any credibility I had established, least of all from a service which preaches Christian values (Document I).
Francine Waltzing’s form of social work is rare.
She puts clients before professional and organisational reputations. She works consensually with
clients and conflictually with those who do not give
priority to those in need. Her conflict approach is
direct and insistent, but never intentionally aggressive. Her advocacy skills have been recognised by
many colleagues, most of whom were outside her
organisation. One senior professional said:
Francine has always impressed me as a social
worker who has a high level of appreciation of
her client’s rights and needs. When the need
arises she can be an articulate and courageous
advocate for their cause. In my experience her
dedication to her work and her determination
to achieve the best for her clients are outstanding (Document E).
One the senior professionals from outside
Francine’s workplace who spoke highly of her
advocacy skills said:
Although she is not afraid to put forward a different point of view, at the same time she treats
others with a genuine and kindly respect: this
approach can help bring out the best creative
efforts from a team (Document E).
Jeff Rolley, a social work colleague, again from
As an intelligent and experienced manager, she
would easily apply herself to working and
managing in a team situation (Document F).
As mentioned most of these endorsements came
from colleagues outside Waltzing’s agency. Inside
the agency it was another matter. One social
worker who worked with Francine and supervised
her for a while, Cilla Banks, said:
She [Francine] tended to interpret situations so
that the client was always right and the bureaucracy was always wrong…She was very argumentative, proactive …(Document D).
Cilla Banks also though that Francine’s level of
appreciation of client’s rights was perhaps a little
too high:
I believe that Francine needed to be more mellow than that in order to be a good social
worker. [She needed] to be able to compromise
in order to be a good social worker. One of the
many roles of a social worker is advocacy, but
that is advocacy in a good sense which means
that you understand the issues and you articulate them on behalf of your client and avoid the
emotion (Document D).
Against this last statement Ms Waltzing wrote,
‘Compromise client rights?!’.
What often happens to activists in conservative
agencies is that the first attack is often a catalyst for
group bullying, referred to in the literature as
‘mobbing’ (McCarthy, Sheehan, Wilkie 1996).All
of a sudden the activist is confronted with accusations of mis-conduct. These could relate to past
events, with a vengeful management storing the
complaints for a ‘rainy day’. In other instances the
activist is constantly harangued about minor matoutside Francine’s workplace said:
Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. SO, No. 4 1 3
ters, from neglecting to put used coffee cups in
dishwashers, to being rude, to being incompetent
and unsuitable. Sometimes activists are not aware
that a dirty file on them exists until they are able to
access them using freedom of information legislation, or use court discovery processes.
This is exactly how Waltzing came to find out
about colleagues’ witness statements. These statements were on a workers compensation file that her
solicitor obtained with difficulty. It soon became
obvious that these statements were created retrospectively for the purpose of covering the agency’s
tracks after it dismissed her. In all nine people gave
statements; 65 pages of negative and derogatory
comments about Waltzing’s personality and character. Waltzing’s colleague, Karen Morrs, reported:
One of the issues with Francine was really that
she was playing the social worker role when
the task required her just to be a team member
(Document J).
I n this witness statement Ms M o m explained
what was behind her contempt for Francine’s style
of social work:
My expectation of a social worker is that you
need to keep your ob.jectivity…Francine was
using her skills inappropriately and had lost
objectivity…(Document J).
This was not just a dispute over what should be
the professional and ethical elements of social
work practice. If that was all it was Francine would
not have been dismissed. Not only are the allegations false, misleading and exaggerated according
to Ms Waltzing, but the time-lapse between when
they were written and when she knew about them
was a very long period. In fact this rendered her
unable lo defend herself. Provided with a cotermnous opportunity to refute the charges she may
have been able to ask Ms Moms what she meant by
‘inappropriate’. Or what Daphne Kramer meant,
when adding to the mobbing behaviour, she said in
her witness statement:
[Francine] was always making advocacy an
ongoing issue…(and] went overboard i n her
role as a social worker…She was suspended as
a danger to staff and clients (Document K).
After Francine was dismissed her manager
checked her desk and found a document headed
Thirteen Kules of Advocacy. This was shown to
Cilla Banks who commented upon it in her witness
statement:
1 say that the first sentence describing ‘everyone else is enemy’ has nothing to do with
being a social worker (Document D).
Ms Waltzing has observed that the document in
question was recommended reference material in
the community development component of her
social work degree.
While others thought highly of her team work,
her own team acted against her as this extract from
Cilla Banks’ witness statement shows:
On one occasion, after Francine had returned
from maternity leave, I accompanied Paul
Feny [Manager] to disciplinelcounsel
Francine…The team, during her absence, had
changed …case management [before she left
Francine had parents of children at all meetings]…She had come back into the team following her pregnancy leave and was behaving
in a way that was typical of her. The team was
no longer interested in putting up with her
behaviour…At the counselling session
Francine was devastated (Document D).
While on maternity leave the team decided that
…so that it would involve less advocacy (Document D).
Some time after one of the ‘disciplinekounselling sessions’, Francine’s manager is reported to
have observed that:
…Francine had improved and she was working
more like a social worker (Document D).
Francine’s supervisor, Sue Banks, was not in
…I believe she would have preferred an
aggressive, advocating role (Document D).
While the supervisor conceded that Francine
had obtained ‘glowing reports’ from field supervisors and that she (supervisor) had never heard complaints from the children or their families, she concluded her statement by saying:
In my opinion Francine was a dangerous person to have at the organisation, i n terms of
causing damage to the service…(Document D).
Two further and very worrying dimensions to
this story need to be revealed at this point. First
Francine thought that she had at all times a positive
and open relationship with Cilla Banks. In fact at
one point Cilla Banks says ‘She [Francine] saw me
as sotneone who supported her’ (Document D).
The other worrying element is that sundry negative
reports were placed on her file without her knowledge. When she did a successful discovery she was
shocked at what she found:
I was devastated to find that [Cilla] a ‘professional’ supervisor whom I valued and trusted
could turn on me in this way-not merely out of
innocent error of judgement or forgetfulness –
but vexatiousness (sic)…Above all, a ‘professional’ who ought to have aspired to the higher
moral ground of integrity, honesty, good-will
and sincerity…However the knife in my heart
was the attack against my own family [unreported in this paper] …I was in tears for two
days when I read this (Document G).
The reasons given by Francine’s agency for dismissing her made no mention of her activist style.
Francine’s role would change:
agreement:
1 4 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4
Rather one finds references to ‘inappropriate
behaviour’, ‘conflict’, ‘harassment’, ‘complaints’
and ‘loss of confidence’ (Document H).
Francine Waltzing has fought long and hard to
protect her name. She has had a major victory in a
Supreme Court. This was an unusual course of
action. Usually the activist social worker is
hounded to the point of resignation. Waltzing
added:
…[the agency] has an incredibly high turnover
rate, most people leave quietly or take any
offer or pay out. I believe that I am the first to
put up this kind of resistance (Document I).
Holland and Kilpatrick had such an activist in
One worker defined her recumng struggle with
her supervisor as a basic and ongoing ethical
problem. She saw herself as a strong and committed advocate for the clients, because she
sought to maximise not only the resources and
benefits available to them but also her flexibility in making use of such resources on their
behalf. She saw her supervisor, however, as
constraining such efforts in the interests or
observing organisational policies and limits on
reimbursements. The social worker felt isolated and burned out from the accumulated tension. A few weeks after the interview the
authors learned that she had resigned (Holland
& Kilpatrick 1991,p.140).
Social workers who put ethics before expediency should not have to suffer as they do. An ethic
their sample (referred to above):
“Social workers who put ethics before
expediency should not have to suffer
as they do.”
of activism is offered in this final part of the paper,
as a partial response to this issue.
AN ETHIC OF ACTIVISM
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
Frederick Engels.
Articulating the shape of an ethic of activism for
social work is a grand and exciting project beyond
the reach of any one person. So the reader can
expect a sense of anti-climax as the paper moves to
conclusion. Debate, critical reflection on practice,
new listenings to the muffled voices of our clients,
over a long period of time, will add dimension to
the development of an ethic of activism. Hopefully
the paper has set the direction for that project.
This articulation of an ethic of activism, when
(or if) i t happens, cannot be grafted on to the existing liberal base of mainstream social work. As
already indicated, an ethic of activism is fundamentally antagonistic to liberal forms of social
work intervention. No graftings, no eclecticism, no
compromises. To bring activism in, the profession
must reject its liberal base. A tall, and at the
moment impossible order to fulfil.
In the meantime the rhetorical and symbolic
value of the AASW Code of Ethics, as distinct
from its practice value, continues to endure. A
morally confused document, it is best understood
as a contradiction at rest. There are signs however
that this conceptual tranquillity is about to be disturbed as the Kantian aspects of the Code are critically engaged by alternative sources of moralising.
The first challenge was mounted through feminist philosophy, particularly Gilligan’s work on an
ethic of care (Gilligan 1982, 1987). This ethic
focused on universally valued character traits; for
example, compassion and friendship. Explicit to
this position is a challenge to Kantian notions of
autonomous, unified, rational beings, and a robust
philosophical advocacy for moral relativism, relationships and humanitarian concern (Beauchamp &
Bowie 1993, p.40). The paper has predicted that a
second challenge will soon emerge, with Aboriginal social workers exploring an ethic of collectivism (Thorpe et al. 1996).
The paper mounts a third challenge by arguing
that direct action can be morally justified through a
combination of intent and process (rather than consequence), and as such deserves to be made ethically respectable by inclusion in the AASW Code
of Ethics. This ethical relativist position distinguishes itself from Kant’s use of intention to justify
action. Kant said that action is ethical if it arises
from a desire to do one’s duty, and that this maxim
can be willed as a universal law (Hinman 1994,
p.287). No such reliance on duty or universal prescription occurs in the articulation of an ethic of
activism. Justification by intent goes to the primary
values or objectives of the social action, as understood by the actors. These values, to the activist,
are unimpeachable. However, this does not mean
that they are universally accepted. Social action is
always controversial and may arise from any point
on the ideological spectrum. The important thing is
that the activists believe that they are pursuing a
process in order to achieve human betterment. For
example the National Committee to Defend Black
Rights revolved around the value of human life,
irrespective of colour (Corbett 1991, ch.6). Similarly the intent behind the Women Against Incest
Collective formed in 1983 was the protection of
children from home-based sexual assault (Calvert
1991, ch.7).
As the concept of relative, as opposed lo universal, morality is alive in this position, it stands to
reason that no meta-ethical test of the intentions of
Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4 15
the actor or the moral worth of the action exists.
Actors and their actions can only depend on moral
evaluations from within the framework that coencapsulates them. Where it becomes oppressive is
when a moral code masquerades as a universal position, when all it is doing is expressing its temporal
dominance over alternative sources of morality. Liberalism does this with respect to its particular understanding of the values of individualism and social
justice. In summary this position argues for a moral
test on objectives, not (as is usual) on strategies.
Given this reasoning, many activist strategies may
be illegal. That does not necessarily make them
immoral.
Not only should social action be defined by the
presence of objectives that protect and promote
human value, it should also be defined by a specific
process in which there is constant co-involvement of
suffering people with their own liberation. The Fairfield rent strike in 1986 is an example of this. That
process of action against an oppressive landlord was
characterised by a direct and constant involvement
of those inost exposed to the landlord’s practices
(Mowbray 1991, ch.8). So action on behalfofclients
is not social action. For it to be so action must he
with people who claim that their rights, voice, or
standard of living have been suppressed.’
Intent and process are seen in this paper as the
essential moral ingredients of social action. Programs that can show an intent to improve the human
condition and involve people in their own emancipation constitute for present purposes ethically defensible social action. Social workers are often involved
centrally or marginally in such programs and often
suffer for such involvement. Or, in the absence of a
social movement social workers single-handedly
take on an activist cause on behalf of the silently dispossessed, as Waltzing did. These people also suffer.
One measure of protection would be afforded if
activists could obtain ethical recognition for their
~~~~ ~~~ ~
“Onemeasure of protection would be
afforded if activists could obtain ethical
recognition for their work.”
work. However it is recognised that this call for
ethical enfranchisement is not possible in the prevailing political economy of social work. If and
when the neo-conservative period passes, social
work will still be left with the potentially schismatic issue of how to ethlcally respond to its
activist membership. Until then these activists will
continue to flap on clipped wings.
CONCLUSION
If the 1980s was the decade of offkial cormption (Armstrong 1992; Kenny 1993; Peachment
1995), then the 1990s is (predictably) the decade of
official probity (Finn 1991; EARC 1992;
McConkey et al. 1996). A principal weapon in this
quiet yet insistent campaign for moral reannament
is the code of ethics. Codes are being written for
politicians (NSW Legislative Council 1996;
Warhurst 1996,p. 18),and public servants (Queensland Public Sector Ethics Act 1994; De Maria
1995). All manner of service providers, from hospitals to McDonalds, are hawking mission statements and conduct standards to assure clients and
customers that best practice reigns above all else.
Recently, for example, the Institution of Engineers
Australia ran a newspaper advertisement at the cost
of just under $18,000, guaranteeing people that
members of the Institution ‘…are committed to the
highest professional and ethical standards’ (Weekend Ausfruliun, 31 August 1996). Professional
associations such as those of nurses, lawyers and
journalists are at the same time reviewing their
codes (Bloch & Chodoff 1991; Benjamin & Curtis
1992; Bates 1994, p. 12; Darvall-Stevens 1994,
pp.26-3 1 ; Turner 1994, pp.1– 12; Johnstone 1995
pp. 142-144), and a state government has recently
increased the legislative surveillance on professional conduct (NSW Professional Standards Act
1994). Parallelling this is a mini-boom time for
universities enrolling fee-paying students seeking
graduate qualification in ethics (Charles Sturt University 1996).
An interest in moral discourse has always been
an important part of social work scholarship. The
number of books on social work ethics published in
the last few years is indicative of an enduring interest in the moral issue at play in social work practice
(Rhodes 1992; Bond 1993; Bauman 1993; Donnison 1994; Banks 1995; Hugman & Smith 1995). A
current AASW proposal would make membership
contingent upon candidates demonstrating a
detailed knowledge of the Code, a comprehensive
understanding of its basic principles and a commitment to practice within the Code (AASW Ltd
1996, p. I ).
This interest, this priority for ethics-speak, while
constant, is debated and expressed within a narrow
ideological field. Two major differences arise from
this. First the debate is contradiction-ridden. An
example of this was the position within the Code
whereby ethical co-equality is ascribed to the
inherently conflictual values of individuality and
social justice. Secondly the debate is falsely presented as an inclusive one, claiming to speak for
the whole social work community, when in fact
only the dominant liberal position is voiced. This
was the major concern of the paper. It was noted
that similar worries have been voiced in the United
Kingdom, South Africa, Canada and Zambia where
16 Australian Social Work December, 1997, Vol. 50, No. 4
moral inclusivity, falsely promoted as technical
genericism, continues to censor ethical and practice
diversity.
A case study was offered to demonstrate that
social workers who confront power, who speak out,
who practise against the contoua ofprivilege, will
not be helped by the AASW Codei-as presently
arranged. Worse, social workers can get damaged
personally and professionally, and welfare atrocities like the ones referred to in the paper will continue.
This article has issued a call to expose the myth
of core-values, and to re-build the AASW Code in
a new yet long overdue spirit of ethical militancy.
Until this is done social work will remain a profession of well-meaning carers with no pro-active
capacity.
END NOTES
1. Activist social work, also known as radical social work, and more
recently structural social work, aspires to collectively constructed
transformative practices whereby the causes of oppression are
directly challenged. This style of practice is in direct contrast to
mainstream social work which avoids the direct challenge and deals
with the epi-phenomena of oppression through reformative and
palliative measures (Galper 1980; Fook 1993; De Maria 1993,
Mullaly 1993).
Social work’s flirtation with science still continues to the extent that
one wonders whether the return of the profession to its conservative
heritage will put fresh energy into the social work-science love
affair. See for example Gray, M. (1995) ‘The Ethical Implications of
Current Theoretical Developments in Social Work’. British Journal
of Social Work, Vo1.25 pp 55-70.
Other than Thorpe et als work I was unable to find literature on the
predicted Aboriginal challenge to the dominant values in Australian
social work. There is abundant material on the same process in
other countries. Ewalt and Mokuau’s paper offers a Polynesian
critique of the dominant western version of self determination.
Sandra Drower, from the University of Witwatersrand puts this
challenge in the context of the racial diversity of South Africa. See
S. Drower (1996) ‘Social Work Values, Professional Unity and the
South African Context’, Social Work, Vo1.41, No. 2, March, pp.138-
146. See also Mokuau. N. and Matsouka, J.(inpress) Turbulance
Among a Native people. Social Work Practice with Hawaiians.
There is also work coming out of Zambia on the same issue. See
Silavwe, G. (1995) “The Need for a New Social Work Perspective in
an African Setting: The Case of Social Casework in Zambia”, British
Jorirnnl nf Sndal Work. Vo1.25. OD 71-84
2
3
themselves. This position is rejected in favour of the middle ground
(co-involvement) between paternalism and non-involvement.
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Article acceptedfor publication September 1997
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