The need for committees of ethics in the ethical evaluation of social services

FORMAT | Presented paper

LANGUAGE |Romanian

HOW TO CITE| Caras, A., & SANDU, Antonio (2012). The need for committees of ethics in the ethical evaluation of social services. Prezentată la A VIII-a Conferinţă Naţională de Bioetică cu participare internațională, 13-16 septembrie 2012, Cluj-Napoca.

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ABSTRACT

The central ethical problem: 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.
Methodology: Ethical evaluation of services should consider the principles of beneficence, autonomy, non-maleficence and justice, as treated by Beauchamp and Childress (2001), as a variant of the principles stipulated in the Belmont report.
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. Customizations will refer to informed consent as a tool of implementing autonomy of the beneficiary.

KEYWORDS:

informed consent, autonomy, ethical supervision, ethical principles.