1. Exploring Ethical Practice
&
Introducing the Relational
Perspective
Week Three

2. Overview (Part 1)
• Explorations of the ethical nature of CYC
practice
• Making an ethically defensible decision

3. Overview (Part 2)
• Bevel Up
• Exploring relationship . . .

4. Setting the Stage
• Practice is complex, unpredictable, grey, and
uncertain
• Absence of black/white pre-specified
solutions to the complexity of ethical
dilemmas that will likely arise in your practice
• Today is going to serve as an opportunity to
apply the resources you read about last week

5. Initial Brainstorm
What are your thoughts on the following
phrase?
• “Caring is a moral endeavour ...”

6. Warm-Up Pair Share
Physical Restraint of
Youth Suicide
Young People
Child Poverty Child Labour
Incarceration of Young
Child Soldiers
People
How do your own values/beliefs affect your discussion of these issues?
What ethical dimensions do we need to consider?

7. Debate
Child & Youth Care Child & Youth Care
Workers should be Workers should
allowed to not be allowed to
physically restrain physically restrain
young people in young people in
their care their care

8. Applying Ethics to CYC
Practice
• The practice of being ethically responsible
and “doing right action” in specific
professional contexts;
• Ethical deliberation and justification for
taking action based on (a) moral values; (b)
principles; and (c) ethical commitments

9. “Acting wisely and ethically is not about applying external rules
or responding in formulaic ways to complex practice challenges.
Instead, it is about reading each situation carefully and recognizing
the contributions of socio-cultural and historical forces.
[It is about] developing problem-solving and ethical deliberation
skills, consulting relevant professional resources, making a
commitment to taking ethical action, and evaluating our
judgments and actions” (White, 2009)

10. Aspirations for Your
Developing Practice
• Making ethics more real - a standard that
informs the entirety of your CYC practice
• Incorporation of ethics into your work
more creatively and comprehensively (Greenwald,
2008)

11. Values
• Assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes about
what is good and desirable
• E.g. strengths-based practice, respect

12. Morality
• People’s views about what is good, right,
proper, their beliefs about obligations, their
ideas about how people should behave
• E.g. children should never be hurt

13. Ethical Principles
• Criteria and rules for deciding on and
justifying “right action”
• E.g. a client has the right to confidentiality

14. Law
• Minimum acceptable standards of behaviour
for citizens
• E.g. it is illegal to assault someone

15. Ethical Dilemmas
• Competing ethical values in a situation
• Two or more courses of action are in
conflict
• Necessary to select one course of action
over the other to resolve dilemma
• Need to arrive at an ethically defensible
resolution

16. Debate
• Read the case example handout carefully
• As a small group, respond to the following
questions:
• What makes this an ethical dilemma (or not?
• What resources would you consult?
• What further information do you need?
• What action would you take and why?

17. Bevel Up
As you watch this film on street nurses in
the DTE, think about the following questions:
• What are some of the skills, abilities,
resources that the nurses employ in their
cultivation of therapeutic relationship?

18. Dignity