Discussion: Decision Making in the Human and Social Services Field
In last week's Assignment, you applied an ethical decision-making model to a scenario involving a family. In this week's Discussion, you apply the decision-making process to a hypothetical scenario involving the beginning stages of working with a particular population group.
Consider the scenario: To become more familiar with the local Native American population with whom he will be working, a human service professional decides to become a participant-observer in the community.
He spends a week with the community at their retreat center. Part of their ritual is to smoke marijuana during their meditation times. Following the week at the center, he reports them to the local law enforcement agency for the illegal use of drugs.
For this Discussion, you examine this professional's decisions and evaluate whether his decisions were ethical, professional, and/or legal. To Prepare:
•After considering the scenario, consult the NOHS ethical standards and the ethical decision-making model in your course text.
•Consider other information you might need to consider in order to evaluate the professional's behavior from ethical, professional, and legal perspectives.
Post an explanation of whether you think the professional's behavior was ethical. Was it professional? Legal? Be specific and provide justifications to support your position(s). Use the Learning Resources to support your post.
•Chapter 1, "Introduction to Professional Ethics" (pp. 20-24 only
•Chapter 12, "Ethical Issues in Group Work" (pp. 432-459)