Human Rights and Ethical Decision Making in Social Work Practice

Social workers make ethical decisions every day. Sometimes the answer is clear. Other times, we face competing responsibilities—to clients, organizations, communities, professional standards, laws, and our own values.

Human Rights and Ethical Decision Making in Social Work Practice is a 3-hour continuing education course designed to help social workers examine ethical decision making through both a professional ethics and human rights lens.

Rather than treating ethics as a list of rules to memorize, this course explores how ethical principles apply to real people, real systems, and complex practice situations. Participants are encouraged to consider dignity, self-determination, informed choice, cultural humility, equity, access to services, professional boundaries, competing obligations, and the potential consequences of our decisions.

The course also explores the connection between social work and the broader human rights movement. Participants will consider how civil rights and human rights principles intersect with social work values and how historical and systemic factors can influence the choices available to individuals, families, and communities.

What You Will Learn

By completing this course, participants will strengthen their ability to:

• Recognize ethical issues and competing responsibilities in social work practice.
• Apply a structured process to ethical decision making.
• Examine situations from both social work ethics and human rights perspectives.
• Consider self-determination, dignity, autonomy, safety, culture, and access when evaluating ethical choices.
• Recognize how personal values, professional roles, organizational expectations, laws, policies, and systems can affect decision making.
• Think critically about power, bias, barriers, and unintended consequences.
• Use professional standards and ethical reasoning to support thoughtful, defensible practice decisions.

What the Course Includes

This is an asynchronous, self-paced 3-hour continuing education course. Course materials include educational presentations, supporting handouts and resources, practical examples, and opportunities to apply ethical decision-making concepts.

Participants complete the course at their own pace and complete the required post-test and course evaluation. Continuing education certificates are issued to eligible participants who complete the course requirements.