Essay Example on Personal Values, Relation & Professional Ethics: Impact on Social Work

Personal values and relationships coupled with professional attributes and relationship are important in the success of careers. They inspire people's decision in workplaces and guide employees to follow the required work ethics. This paper reflects on how personal values and relations, professional values and relations impacts social work. The personal relationship is a reality of life. Personal relationship refers to the friendship that is above social interactions that employees engage. It can take the form of friendship, intimate relationship and acrimonious relationship (Nedelko & Brzozowski, 2017). When people work closely in the same organization friendship will arise as they share a common interest and engage in activities out of the workplace. Friendships in the workplace build group and organizational cohesion that can increase effectiveness and productivity. It can also increase job satisfaction. It may, however, have a disadvantage as coworkers- it can shift loyalty to coworkers by putting the interest of coworkers above that of the organization. Personal values refer to things that are paramount to us such as traits and acts that inspire and guide our decision. Personal values are important as a person will live better when able to live by the values.

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When the values are not lived by an individual may feel worse. Most workers who are true to their values will not be pressured to work against them. Values such as personal integrity and work ethics are important to workers in any organization. Professional relationship refers to a relationship that exists when one person request and is granted professional help from a qualified source. In social care working together is due to bringing important relationship that improves the quality and experience of care. It is a relationship between individuals and their service providers. It is also a relationship within different organizations taking a joined-up approach to designing and delivering to the provision of service. Professional values are building beliefs and principles that influence a person's work behavior. Some of the professional work values include strong work ethics, adaptability, honesty, and integrity.

Personal relationship and professional relationship are similar in that they in most cases appear in the workplace and may result in meeting the organization goal. For example, Personal relationship leads to cohesion in an organization whereas professional relationship leads to partnering in a certain task working to serve the bigger objective of the company. They both create a working environment that is necessary for meeting the set objectives in an organization. The uniqueness between personal values and professional values is that values can be different as a person grows during his living journey, world influences, and political knowledge and as the comprehending of individuals develops (Tyler, 2002). Professional values do not change like personal values; they are rules employees have to follow so that they can build a working habit that enhances practice and place limits to what is morally upright. Professional values cannot change but personal values can change for example a worker who was once honest can be compromised and give false information when performing duties.

Gender is generally is seen as a set of characteristics that are associated with certain biological of being male or female. An individual being male or female is an accepted truth in society. An individual's role based on gender is different depending on the culture. In social work gender highly impacts the professional relationship. The field is mostly dominated by women with many women working in the field compared to men (Purtilo, Haddad & Doherty, 2018). Women who are social workers and have direct contact with clients may have an easy time handling men compared to fellow women. There is in most times a very good working relationship between the two. For men who are in the field, most women clients would like to associate with men and provide more personal information compared to female clients.

The rather amazing characteristic is not absolute or immediate there are social workers who prefer clients of the same gender due to their profound reasons race is the belief that people are grouped into different groups that share same physical traits (Akhtar,2012). The different types of races include America, Asians, Blacks, and whites. In social work, workers handle clients who may belong to different races. When clients and the social worker are of the same race there is maybe a perfect working relationship based on the same shared origin and language (Sweitzer, & King 2009). Where a social worker is different from the client there may be complex working relations especially when the client is a racist or holds views that some races are superior to others. When the client is of a different race that has believed of superiority against others, the social worker may have a hard time to establish a good working relationship. Due to the presumption of the client boundaries can be created which may spoil the working relationship of the two.

Age refers to a period of human life measured by years from birth usually marked by a certain stage. The number of years one has lived is in most cases equated to knowledge or experiences in any profession. Young people may face backlash from clients who may regard them as not having the required experiences to perform tasks (Sweitzer & King, 2009). Age greatly impacts the working relationships in social work. Social workers who are young tend to strike a good working relationship with their peers while face challenges when working with older clients. Middle-aged social workers in most times have the best working relationship as they gain the trust of many clients who see them as better qualified. For clients who are old, a preference to middle-aged social workers is definite. A good working relationship is seen between the two. For young clients, they may prefer either older social workers or young ones.

In social work having a good working relationship between the client and the social worker is the start of the healing process. When the working relationship is worse the objective of working together towards healing becomes vague. It becomes an absolute success when meeting a client is of the same race as you get a natural connection without misunderstanding. It becomes when dealing with different races especially when they feel superior to you or a feeling of low self-esteem (Sweitzer & King, 2009). I am forced to come up with strategies that prove neutrality to form a therapeutical process. For example, when dealing with a client of Indian origin it is sometimes difficult to strike a good working relationship. In age majority of clients may feel being young as having no capability to conduct proper duties. Clients may become discreet when they find out you are younger than them(Akhtar,2012). They feel embarrassed in sharing information that is confidential to us. This may derail the therapeutic process where information is key in social work. For example, a client who is the age of my father may fail to provide information that will make him embarrassed before me. This makes it hard to come up with a solution to help the client. However, as a social worker, this cannot derail the process of therapy. A social worker has to come up with ways that are necessary to help the client.

To successfully have a successful working relation a shoe of impartiality is important in all social work undertakings. This is important to get rid of prejudice from clients or clients having a presumption of favor or bad treatment from a social worker. As a social worker, I have embraced every race to remove prejudices and having smooth sailing when working. Due to this clients develop trust and are ready to share information that will lead to therapy. When dealing with clients which we share the same race I will try and have ethical standards and professional standards which will initiate a boundary to the only work-related relationship. On clients from different races, I will ensure the clients feel comfortable in sharing information and winning trust to have a successful healing process.

Conclusion

Conclusively, age is a major issue in social work. When dealing with older clients I would ensure I maintain professionalism and reassure the client of my goodwill in imitating therapy. This can eliminate the barrier of the client feeling embarrassed when sharing confidential information. I can also partner with fellow social workers who may assist when dealing with older clients who may feel comfortable with older social workers. The many hurdles social workers meet due to differences and similarities in either race or age can be overcome by sticking to professional codes which may reduce the impacts they may possess on social work. As a social work handling clients of different identities will allow the good experience to always strike professional attachment that will enable healing. Personal values and relationships should not influence a social worker to a point where he or she is unable to achieve the healing of clients. Professional values and relationship should ensure the social worker becomes better in performing their duties.

References

Akhtar, F. (2012). Mastering social work values and ethics. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Nedelko, Z., & Brzozowski, M. (2017). Exploring the influence of personal values and cultures in the workplace. IGI Global.

Purtilo, R. B., Haddad, A. M., & Doherty, R. F. (2018). Health Professional and Patient Interaction E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Sweitzer, H. F., & King, M. A. (2009). The successful internship: Personal, professional, and civic development. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.

Tyler, A. (2002). Ladder of years. Penguin Canada.