“Ethical dilemmas, also known as a moral dilemmas, are situations in which there is a choice to be made between two options, neither of which resolves the situation in an ethically acceptable fashion” (Your Dictionary, 2001). The ethical dilemma I’m choosing is breach of client confidentiality in terms of child abuse. Dilemmas around child abuse arise when the principle of confidentiality is in conflict with other ethical principles. The confidentiality principle may be in conflict when a client (child) is being harmed and neglected. The assumption is that social workers should always protect client confidentiality, unless there is a reason to do otherwise. However, in many cases social workers are likely to disagree if the circumstances rise to the level required for disclosure of confidential information without client consent or if they don’t. Social workers need to remember three specific conditions when dealing with an ethical dilemma and deciding what course of action to take:
• “The first condition occurs in situations when an individual must make a decision about which course of action is best” (The New Social Worker (2014)). In the case of child abuse the social worker must consider all of the factors in the case to determine which course of action is best for the client in a particular situation. The social worker need to know the type of abuse, how severe the situation is, and requirements under law to follow.
• “The second condition for ethical dilemma is that there must be different courses of action to choose from” (The New Social Worker (2014)). In this case after the social worker evaluated to severity, environment and number of other factors associated with the particular case they would choose which course of action would be appropriate to take.
Some courses of action to consider would be: what is the best option for the child (ren) and/ or