The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has established a code of ethics to help guide and direct professional behavior. Human services workers will face dilemmas all throughout their career and having this code of ethics will help them in the resolution. One issue that can become a dilemma for a social worker might be when client consent is not required to breach confidentiality. According to Ward (2002), ‘If the client is determined to be actively suicidal, a social worker must intervene, with or without the client’s consent” (p. 43). There will be cases where the confidentiality must be broken in order to best serve all involved. To resolve complex issues one should take into consideration the standards and principles in the code of ethics that are relevant to the situation. The principles are: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationship, integrity, and competence (Manning, 2003, p. 280). The standard for social workers is the ethical responsibilities to: clients, colleagues, being professional, the social work profession, and to the broader society (Manning, 2003, p. 282). This specific dilemma could be guided by the code of ethics when the general expectation of social workers to keep information confidential does not apply to prevent serious harm to a client or another person. The NASW code of ethics is effective for the social worker in this issue because it explains privacy and confidentiality in detail and has a set of standards and principles holding the worker accountable. My recommendation for a proposed amendment of the code of ethics on this issue would be to assess the client’s mental illness concurrent with other information collected at time of services.

References
Manning, S. S. (2003). Ethical Leadership in Human Services: A Multi-Dimensional Approach. Allyn and Bacon.
Ward, K.