Turning a new leaf

A report from the Professional Standards Committee

Our committee reformed in 2022, and has already undertaken a number of projects over the past year, thanks to the dedicated leadership of Erin McDonald, RSW and Lauren Matheson, SWC.

Committee members collaborated to write a blog post published on the NSCSW website, which highlighted the importance of our profession’s standards, and they began to reflect upon ways to further promote these principles for our members. Fundamentally, this committee’s role is to serve a preventative function, supporting members and addressing areas of potential concern in order to limit the number of complaints that might be lodged against a social worker as a result of a lack of clarity on their part.

The committee began to develop a set of guidelines regarding social work documentation. These guidelines were requested by a number of social workers and employers, and were very broad in their focus. The committee examined a number of contexts and issues, and in the process, was able to begin to chart the roadmap that it would need to follow moving forward. Additionally, the request for these guidelines and the consultations with diverse employers of social workers on this topic, provided the impetus for the development of an outreach and engagement strategy with social work employers that will continue into the coming year.

The committee also focused upon the development of an ethics consultation process, thanks to the hard work of social work practicum student, Amber Gallant, SWC, who reached out to social work regulatory bodies and professional associations across the globe to learn about the varied ethics consultation models in existence. This, in turn, formed the basis of the ethics consultation process that is now underway for the College to better support its members who may find themselves struggling with an ethical dilemma that they identify thanks to the College’s existing ethics consultation tool (ethical.nscsw.org).

Members of the committee were also invited to provide feedback and input on the CASW’s new code of ethics, which will more explicitly focus upon anti-racism and equity issues. The committee is eager to continue this process as the CASW continues its work in this area. The committee also recognizes that often, the moral distress and ethical concerns that many social workers face are not actually driven by our profession’s code of ethics so much as they are related to larger systemic injustices and policies that are not aligned with our values.

As a result, members of the committee worked with Dr. Marika Warren, who oversees ethics consultation processes for the entire province’s health care organization, to begin to address this gap. The creation of a new professional development series of virtual ethics cafés offers opportunities for NSCSW members to reflect upon frequently posed ethical concerns, and to learn about ways to translate those concerns into internal advocacy, by calling for system ethics consultations.

In this way, social workers are able to gather a diverse group of health care professionals to consider the issue from multiple perspectives, and in so doing, to begin to reflect upon larger gaps in system policy and service delivery.

Finally, the professional standards committee is completing another series of guidelines, in response to the recent changes in divorce law, so that social workers can have some guidance when working with children and their families, during situations of divorce and separation. This guidelines, like the documentation guidelines, are undergoing final revisions and integrating the feedback of the NSCSW membership, and upon Council’s approval, will then be disseminated through educational workshops.

2022 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

Debra Bourque, Jacqueline Duggan, Joline Comeau, Emily Crosby, Bernadette Fraser, Amber Gallant, Linden Hardie, Danielle Hodges, Calandra Kandziora, Stephanie LeBlanc, Terrence Lewis, Helen Luedee, Kimberley MacLean, Lauren Matheson (co-chair), Erin McDonald (co-chair), April MunroWood, Naj Siritsky (staff liaison), Angela Smith, Terri-Lynn Smith, Curtis Stevens, Joanna Thompson