Social Workers Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in the Course of Their Professional Work: The Greek Experience

Abstract

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.