Ethical Evaluation of Social Services and the Need for Ethics Committees

FORMAT | Presented paper

LANGUAGE |Romania

HOW TO CITE| Caras, A., & SANDU, Antonio (2013). Ethical Evaluation of Social Services and the Need for Ethics Committees. Prezentată la International Conference Logos, Universality, Mentality, Novelty, Education, 10-13 aprilie 2013, Iaşi.

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ABSTRACT

We propose to treat the importance of establishing committees of ethics (of research) in social work organizations. We refer here to the ethical analysis of individualized service plans and intervention strategies that case managers apply to beneficiaries, the central ethical problem being represented by the analysis of conditions of ethical acceptability of social intervention.
We will treat tangentially the need for ethical supervision, which refers to the effective supervision of the organization’s ethical practices. The paper has argumentative character, the central premise being that intervention in social work is a form of action research and thus it should be based on the same rules of research on human subjects. The second premise is that according to which as medical assistance, social intervention changes the quality of life of the beneficiary, and this change requires ethical evaluation in order to analyze the conditions in which ethics is perceived and accepted as defining part of the social intervention. The ethical evaluation is a process that could be made by specialists from ethics committee.
We bring into discussion a series of new concepts in social services, such as ethics committees, ethical supervision, ethical counselling.

KEYWORDS:

committees of ethics, ethical principles, informed consent, autonomy, supervision of ethics, ethical evaluation.