A Study On The Localization Of Social Workers' Dual Relationship

The goal of Social Work is to help others, and also attaches great importance to the value of life and humanitarian. With the development of specialization of social work, social work ethics are also in constant development and improvement. The progress of local social work needs the support of social work ethics theories, and the promotion of social work international connection is also inseparable from the reflection of local social work ethics. Especially in the situations of localization, dual relationship issues of social work ethics are more worthy of discussion and research from social workers.In this thesis, I use the sequential mixed-research method, in the form of questionnaires and then the case interviews, to figure out the whole picture of Shanghai social workers’ attitude to dual relationship ethics and to analysis the system and factors influencing their attitude. The researcher distributed 200 questionnaires and 174 valid questionnaires were returned, with 87% of the total number. I also interviewed 12 local social workers in the case interview. Through non-parametric test, I find that the ethical acceptance of local social workers to ‘sexual dual relationships’ is the lowest, followed by the ethical acceptance of ‘financial dual relationships’, while the ethical acceptances of ‘professional dual relationships’ and ‘social dual relationships’ are high. The ethical acceptances of dual relationships to male social workers are higher than female. The social workers’ ethical acceptances of dual relationships with ‘previous client’ are higher than ‘client’. Through the content analysis of 12 surveyed case interviews, I find that the local social workers are in struggle with the professional ethics and the traditional society. Social workers usually make a choice in the case which does not violate the broad framework of code of ethics and the traditional ethics. The professional boundaries become blurred at this time. This is a great challenge faced by local social workers currently.In the part of discussion, I focus on the following four items. 1. The sequence of local social workers’ acceptance in different types of dual relationship behaviors. 2. The discussion of the social workers’ attitudes of dual relationships in different qualifications and educational backgrounds. 3. The ethical issues in gender. 4. The discussion of ‘relationship’ and ‘favors’ in localized situations with dual relationships. This study shows that the overall cognition of dual relationships’ ethical behaviors to local social workers is good. But the acceptances are affected by many factors such as gender, education, ethics, and human relations. The future research of social work ethics can be viewed at different fields of social workers or the issues of gender, which renders the research of social work ethics with more innovation and practices values.