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  • 42 - Social Worker Decision-Making

  • from Part V - Other Legal Decision-Making
  • Edited by Monica K. Miller, University of Nevada, Reno, Logan A. Yelderman, Prairie View A & M University, Texas, Matthew T. Huss, Creighton University, Omaha, Jason A. Cantone, George Mason University, Virginia
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Legal Decision-Making
    Published online:
    22 February 2024
    Print publication:
    29 February 2024, pp 647-663

  • Summary

    Social workers make decisions every day involving the protection of children and/or adults who are at risk of, or are experiencing, abuse and neglect, exercising power and authority derived from law. Social workers must act within the law: “doing things right.” Accountable, legally literate practice additionally includes standards from administrative law when statutory duties are used. However, decision-making frequently also raises ethical dilemmas, including whether, when, and how to intervene in people’s lives. Practice must, therefore, be ethically literate: “doing right things.” Human rights, equality, and social justice issues will also feature in social work decision-making: “right thinking.” This chapter presents a framework for social worker decision-making that is legally and ethically, but also emotionally, relationally, organizationally and knowledge, literate. It proposes that this framework is transferable across the different jurisdictions within which social workers practice, and that it helps social workers to make good as well as lawful decisions.