Virtue Ethical Model

There were ten different situations where $40,000 was needed, but only one could be given the funds. I decided on helping the divorced single mother with three children, a tenth-grade education, and nothing but the clothes on her back. Within this paper I will discuss what contemporary approach lead me to this decision, how a different contemporary approach could oppose my decision, and then I will support my decision with the efficiency and effectiveness criteria.

I used the virtue ethic contemporary approach to make my decision on which situation to help. Virtue ethics claims that: “only the person in each case can know then and there what is best, the right reason for the particular situation.” (Dolgoff, 2009, p. 62). Or in other words,

62). “The role of the virtuous social worker is shown to be one that necessitates appropriate application of intellectual and practical virtues such as justice, reflection, perception, judgement, bravery, prudence, liberality and temperance.” (Mcbeath, 2002, p. 1015). Given all of the choices of whom I could help, I chose the single mother because that is what a virtuous person would do. The money available is a scarce resource because it can only be used once and all together. A historically used standpoint about distribution of scarce resources is based on the potential outcome of the decision, ethical relativists say that the young should take precedence over the elderly because they are the nation’s future and they have yet to live their lives (Dolgoff, 2009, p. 179). When looking at the NASW (2008) Code of Ethics, this problem is not specifically addressed so let’s look at an ethical principle from within the code. The primary goal of a social worker is

Clinical pragmatism believes that the personal ethical stance of a social worker is nowhere near as important as societal ethics (Dolgoff, 2009, p. 56). “Societal values are values that are recognized by major portions of the entire social system or, at least, by the leading members or spokespersons of that system” (Dolgoff, 2009, p. 65). So what is society’s ethical standpoint on this matter? First let’s define what pragmatic is; “dealing with the problems that exist in a specific situation in a reasonable and logical way” (Webster, Pragmatic). So instead of helping the young, we should help the young and elderly as much as possible instead of one taking priority (Dolgoff, 2009, p. 179). Therefore, we should help the youngest; a premature infant (born 3 months early) needs to be maintained in an incubator and receive medical benefits. The option with the eldest person involved is my 60 year old father who needs a heart transplant. However, that could be considered a violation of NASW (2008) Code of Ethics section 1.06 that states: “social workers should not take unfair advantage of any professional relationship or exploit others to further their personal, religious, political, or business interests” (1.06). There are so many other options besides helping my own father but he is at the same time, the oldest option to help. Making a choice between ethical dilemmas is very