Challenges and/or Cautions for Using Electronic Communication and/or Social Media With Families.

May/June 2008

The Challenge of Electronic Advice
By Frederic G. Reamer, PhD
Social Piece of work Today
Vol. viii No. iii

When social work began as a profession in the tardily 19th century, the telephone was a relatively new invention. Only a handful of years before social piece of work's formal inauguration, Alexander Graham Bell placed the first telephone call to Thomas Watson. Social piece of work'southward primeval practitioners grew to depend on the telephone, so the only electronic tool available to them, as a vital office of their efforts to programme and evangelize services to clients.

During those early years, what social worker could take perchance forecast the range of electronic tools that are now considered essential in contemporary social work practise? Social workers in hospitals, substance abuse handling programs, private practices, nursing homes, hospice programs, customs mental health centers, schools, correctional facilities, and a wide range of other settings regularly depend on electronics to acquit out their professional duties. Social piece of work clinicians, case managers, supervisors, community organizers, agency administrators, policy analysts, researchers, and educators can hardly imagine professional life without cell phones, fax machines, eastward-mail, and the Cyberspace.

Clinicians routinely fax documents to colleagues in other agencies to coordinate services for clients and plan their discharge from programs. Social workers in home-based service programs would observe it hard to live without jail cell phones to help them go along in touch with their agencies and clients. Social work administrators would be hamstrung if they had to function without email and electronic spreadsheets. The piece of work of instance managers and crisis information specialists would exist stymied if they did not have access to upward-to-date, Spider web-based data nearly customs resource.

About no social worker would want to return to the electronically primitive days of the late 19th century despite widespread laments about how oversaturated and overwhelmed contemporary practitioners are by electronic communications. Most social workers take come up to accept the trade-offs involved in their dependence on electronic tools, recognizing that, despite the drawbacks, they raise and facilitate the commitment of services.

Novel Ethical Challenges
Amidst the chronic challenges involved in the use of electronic communications in social work are daunting ethical issues, such equally the post-obit:

• Althea was a social worker in private practice in a pocket-sized, rural community. Her client needed to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Althea faxed a summary of the client's clinical profile to the infirmary admissions department of the hospital—or so she thought. Unfortunately, Althea misdialed the concluding digit of the hospital's fax number. The sensitive certificate, which included details about the client's psychiatric diagnoses and substance abuse history, was faxed inadvertently to a local motorcar repair shop'southward fax auto, which had a similar phone number. A mechanic at the shop retrieved Althea's fax. The mechanic was the client's one-time brother-in-law, and the customer and the mechanic'south sister were divorced and in the midst of a bitter child custody dispute. The mechanic shared the sensitive document with his sister.

• Danielle was employed every bit a supervisor by a family unit service agency that provided home-based intervention for families in crisis. Danielle occasionally used e-postal service to consult with colleagues about her cases. On one occasion, Danielle included identifying data and sensitive details well-nigh i of her clients in her response to an email message she received from a colleague. Danielle inadvertently clicked on "reply to all" when she responded to the message, sending her message to several people who should not have had access to those confidential details.

• Lawrence was a clinical social worker who adult a Web site to promote his counseling services. Lawrence provided Net-based counseling to clients who lived hundreds of miles abroad. He did not meet well-nigh of his clients in person. One of Lawrence's clients sent him several troubling email letters consistent with suicidal ideation and gesturing. Lawrence did non accept information well-nigh emergency contacts in the customer'due south home customs.

Evolving Ethical Standards
As electronic tools in social piece of work practise accept proliferated, the profession has had to create upstanding guidelines to keep pace with these developments. These guidelines are designed to do the following:

• Avoid ethical mistakes. Social workers demand to take careful steps to, for instance, avoid faxing documents or east-mailing sensitive information to the incorrect destination. They also demand to protect clients' privacy when using cell phones in public settings and audiotaping clients during clinical sessions.

• Foreclose ethical misconduct. Social workers must use electronic tools responsibly. They should not promote electronic services that endanger clients (such equally Internet-based counseling that does not include adequate clinical protections and safeguards) or compromise clients' privacy for social workers' self-serving purposes (for example, using e-mail or cell telephone text messages to cultivate an inappropriate personal human relationship with a client).

• Heighten social workers' management of ethical dilemmas involving electronic communications. Examples include social workers' decisions about whether to requite at-gamble clients their personal cell telephone numbers for apply in an emergency, whether to engage in clinically relevant e-mail service communications with a client who will be traveling abroad for an extended menstruum of fourth dimension, and how to protect clients' privacy when videotaping them for educational or training purposes.

Dissimilar its predecessors, the electric current National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics includes explicit ethical standards to aid social workers avoid ethical mistakes, preclude misconduct, and manage upstanding dilemmas involving electronic communication:

• Social workers who provide services via electronic media (such equally reckoner, telephone, radio, and television set) should inform recipients of the limitations and risks associated with such services. (standard 1.03[e])

• Social workers should obtain clients' informed consent before audiotaping or videotaping clients or permitting ascertainment of services to clients past a third political party. (standard 1.03[f])

• Social workers should protect the confidentiality of clients' ... electronic records and other sensitive information. Social workers should take reasonable steps to ensure that clients' records are stored in a secure location and that clients' records are not available to others who are not authorized to accept access. (standard one.07 [l])

• Social workers should take precautions to ensure and maintain the confidentiality of information transmitted to other parties through the utilize of computers, electronic mail, facsimile machines, telephones and telephone answering machines, and other electronic or calculator technology. Disclosure of identifying information should be avoided whenever possible. (standard 1.07[m])

Social work practice has changed dramatically since its earliest days. Among the most remarkable changes are those involving the evolution and proliferation of electronic tools. Fortunately, the profession'southward ethical standards take evolved to assistance practitioners manage these challenges.

— Frederic G. Reamer, PhD, is a professor in the graduate program of the Schoolhouse of Social Work, Rhode Island Higher. He is the author of many books and articles, and his research has addressed mental health, healthcare, criminal justice, and professional ideals.

jonessompery94.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/EoEMayJun08.shtml