Human Service Ethical Dilemma Paper

Living and working in a small community creates additional challenges with being a human service worker. The majority of people have deep generational roots in the community and everyone knows everyone else, including knowledge of personal matters. Having several community involvement activities such as attending the largest church and being on the school’s PTO creates even more challenges. The main concern is that it can be hard to separate knowledge that is learned about a person just from being a community member and knowledge that is learned through professional human service work. The ethical dilemma presented is that knowledge learned through professional human service work is confidential information. According to the textbook, “An Introduction to Human Services: 8th Edition ” written by Marianne Woodside and Tricia McClan (2015), confidentiality is an assurance to the client that information divulged during a professional meeting will remain between client and worker. Information can only be shared with others outside the agency with the client’s consent (p. 280). Therefore, keeping information that is learned during a professional client meeting must be kept separate from personal knowledge so that confidentiality can be upheld. A legal consideration to consider is the law. The Federal Privacy Act of 1974,

281). When there are no guidelines for the conflict, the human service worker has a responsibility to assume an attitude of moral responsibility that comes from within the individual. Additionally, the worker can consult with colleagues and experts to gain different perspectives and utilize other resources (p. 291). It is important to take the appropriate steps when a course of action is needed. By consulting with the proper personnel in the agency, a resolution can be made effectively and