Eleni Papouli

This chapter provides two key concepts – "moral courage" and "moral distress" – in social work education and practice. It looks at the historical background of the two concepts and examines the leading definitions and search for different types. The chapter also examines the relationship between the two concepts and the social work profession, as well as possible causes and effects on social workers and students. It discusses specific strategies for acting with moral courage and dealing with moral distress in social work practice. In order to present a clear and complete view of the two concepts, it look for relevant literature in other fields that use the concepts of moral courage and moral distress more fully. The chapter describes the three main types of courage physical courage, psychological courage and moral courage. The concepts of “moral courage” and “moral distress” play key roles in social workers’ professional well-being and performance.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of Aristotle’s model of virtue ethics for today’s social workers and students, as it can help them to build an ethical character and promote ethical conduct in both their personal and professional lives. In doing so, the paper first provides an overview of virtue ethics theory and its revival over the last decades in western societies and then, discusses the basic tenets of Aristotle’s ethics theory in relation to the social work profession. In addition, the main types of Aristotelian virtues are presented including cardinal virtues (courage, justice, practical wisdom/phronesis, temperance) and the concepts of eudaimonia and golden mean in relation to their applications in social work practice are described. The paper briefly explains cardinal virtues and provides a case example of moral courage that will help social workers and students to better understand the concept of Aristotle’s golden mean. Finally, it discusses and responds to the main criticisms of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, considering alternative ways to discuss and think about this approach to social work.

This paper presents and discusses an arts-based project, carried out by the first-year students in the classroom, at the Department of Social Work, in Athens, Greece. The project was designed for raising ethical awareness and knowledge of the 2015 Europe’s refugee crisis among social work students. The purpose of this project was three-fold: (1) to help students to better understand the refugee crisis as an emerging problem in Europe and in the rest of the world; (2) to help students raise their ethical awareness about the plight of refugees and to learn how to avoid discrimination and racism; and (3) to improve students’ abilities to work effectively with refugee populations. The project used art-based activities (drawing, writing, photos, etc.) as a powerful pedagogical tool for teaching students and supporting their learning in the classroom. As the literature has shown, the use of arts in social work education helps student to learn through an artistic and creative way and provides a secure base, from which they can explore real-life situations and try to give meaning to them.

This paper is based on a project titled ‘Diversity Dolls’ which was developed to raise awareness about the benefits of fostering diversity among and within different contexts and audiences. The Diversity Dolls are creative tools to use as a pedagogic approach to training social workers and allied professionals in the area of diversity awareness. The project is a creative, multi-approach, training method that successfully combines the use of dolls with collaborative and creative activities such as story writing, storytelling, dramatisation of written stories and role playing. The project was piloted through two workshops involving 27 professionals from different disciplines in order to prepare themselves for the practical implementation in social services and various prevention centres and schools (primary and secondary schools). This paper presents the ‘Diversity Dolls’ project and describes its implementation and evaluation in the context of the two pilot workshops in Greece.

Globally, ethical dilemmas are a relatively neglected topic in social work research, despite their obvious importance to ethical professional practice. This study aims to contribute to the existing literature by exploring ethical dilemmas and related issues faced by social workers in Greece. For our purposes, we created an online survey questionnaire via Survey Monkey software and distributed it nationwide to all social workers, asking those who had more than two years of work experience at any kind of service providing agency to complete it. A total of 835 questionnaires were returned and used for data analysis (response rate 11.13 per cent). The study highlights the diversity of ethical dilemmas encountered by social workers in their professional practice, as well as revealing the different strategies, tools and mechanisms used in dealing with them. Further, it shows the urgent need for developing appropriate ethics support activities and training programmes for social workers, as a crucial part of their ongoing professional education and development. Such ethics initiatives are required to remain ethically competent throughout their working life.

This chapter describes a study conducted to identify and highlight the character strengths and virtues of social work students, considered as important for competent fieldwork education. The data was collected from undergraduate students (N=196) of two Greek university departments of social work, who were in their first placement in different field agencies. The study was descriptive in nature and used a questionnaire, the configuration of which was based on Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) list of 24 character strengths, grouped within six core virtues. The results of the study revealed six main character strengths as important for competent fieldwork education i.e., honesty, fairness/justice, love, humour, kindness and perseverance while minimal differences have been shown between the two university departments. Also, the results identified four factors of character strengths contained under different virtues and associated with effective fieldwork education: emotional strengths (honesty and perseverance) under the virtue of courage, interpersonal strengths (love and kindness) under the virtue of humanity, civic strengths (fairness/justice) under the virtue of justice and connection strengths (humour) under the virtue of transcendence. The study highlights the interrelated and interconnected nature of character strengths as predictors of fieldwork performance for our undergraduate students. But at the same time, it recognizes the unique nature of each character strength as a professional virtue skill for meeting requirements of fieldwork education. The chapter draws conclusions about the importance of establishing strengths-based approaches rather than problem-focused, in fieldwork as the heart of social work education.

This paper presents the research findings from two focus groups (2013) set up to validate and enhance understanding of the findings emerged from the original PhD study (2010) regarding the development of social work values and ethics during a final field placement in Greece. The findings of the focus groups support the original study’s findings, but take them one step further by providing more in-depth information. They help to extend knowledge by revealing novel aspects evolving from each original finding discussed. The key messages from the study reveal the complex process of developing values and ethics in field contexts and underline the need for further research in the progression and development of a student’s ethical awareness and capability.

Virtues are an integral part of human flourishing, both personal and professional. In the professional field, particularly social work, virtues are fully compatible with the role of the social worker as a good person and a good professional. On that account, the notion of virtue is thought to be related only to individual professionals as moral agents. But it is certainly true that as individual professionals need virtues to flourish, organizations need virtues to flourish as well. In accordance with this idea, this chapter takes the discussion to another level, arguing that organizations, like individuals, that lack virtues or neglect them in any way are in danger of unethical practices. In this context, the chapter explores the role of virtues in social service organizations and their impact on ethical practice of social workers and other stakeholders. Finally, it suggests ways to have virtuous social service organizations so that social workers and other professionals are encouraged and empowered to foster ethical decision-making and embrace shared values and beliefs to support ethical practice in the workplace.