How Values Are Important To Me As A Student Social Work

In this assignment I will be describing why the concepts of values are important to me as a student social worker. The three values that I will be discussing throughout this essay with examples provided are; respect, confidentiality and being honest and trustworthy.
‘Values are our principles or standards or behaviour’ (Beckett and Maynard, 2005). Values are also what we think we should be doing or what other individuals should be doing (Parrot, 2006). Values are something that are essential to us. Within social work, values are everywhere. Being able to understand your own values within social work is a key aspect because then you are able to understand the people you will be working with. As Lomax and Jones (2014, p.82) state’s that 'It

Respect is a ‘benevolent, altruistic, or sympathetic expression of regard for other individuals’ (Downie & Telfer, 1969). Respect is behaving in a certain manner in order to show that you care about the individual’s feelings and their well-being. Respect can be shown through empathy and compassion towards an individual. It can also be shown by accepting and considering another individuals differences for example their race, gender, age, sexuality, religion and culture. Respect is a value to me because I believe looking at an individual as a whole and valuing them as an individual along with including their emotional, social, physical well-being and psychological is important. For example previously I have visited a service user’s home who was Asian. Having an Asian cultural belief within myself, my upbringing taught me about how you should behave when in another individual’s house. Such as not wearing outdoor shoes inside, behaving in a positive manner and not being rude. Upon arriving at the service user’s home, I immediately removed my shoes as it is what I have been taught when growing up. Having a shared cultural value base allowed there to be mutual respect between me and the service user. I believe it is important to create a respectful relationship between myself and the service user. If there is no respect between the individual and the service user, then this will lead the service user

Richards, J (2003) states that confidentiality ‘is the respect for the privacy of any information about a client/patient’. The purpose for this act to be put into place in 1998 is to protect the rights of individual’s information from being disclosed. Individuals like care workers, social workers and doctors are not allowed to share any personal information without the service user’s consent. The type of information that should be disclosed from other individuals are: name, age, sex, address and the individuals date of birth. Confidentiality is when two individuals are discussing their personal information for example a social worker and their client, this will then build trust between them. This is because the patient is aware that the information will stay disclosed and will not be shown without their permission. In some situations, information needs to be revealed by law. The (GMC Policy) states that information can only be revealed if the information was ‘likely to cause serious harm to the individual or someone else.’ For example, when I was volunteering at Bradford Central Foodbank and I was communicating with the service user. They brought up that they were feeling suicidal and had previously tried taking their life. To me it felt like they were crying out loud for help. After listening to what they had to say, I decided to tell my manager and let them help the individual. When going