Category: Ethics Category: Ethics (show less) Other: Missouri, Wisconsin Other: Missouri, Wisconsin (show less)

Social workers often face tough choices when professional values and legal duties collide. How do you protect confidentiality, respect each person’s dignity, promote fairness, and support self-determination while also following laws on mandatory reporting, duty to warn, or emergency detentions? These gray areas can be stressful, especially when quick decisions are required.
This training offers practical tools to handle these challenges across different settings and age groups. Participants will learn how to use the NASW Code of Ethics, Wisconsin’s MPSW 20 rules, and Reamer’s Seven-Step Ethical Decision-Making Model to guide their work. Real case examples will explore the balance between client autonomy and safety, the limits of confidentiality, and how documentation and decision-making can affect power and trust.
Through discussion and case studies with children, teens, adults, and vulnerable adults, participants will build skills to make thoughtful, defensible choices while keeping clients at the center. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with more confidence and clear strategies for staying true to professional values, even when the best path forward isn’t obvious.
1. Identify key principles of the NASW Code of Ethics and Wisconsin’s MPSW 20 rules that guide decision-making in challenging situations.
2. Analyze case examples to recognize conflicts between confidentiality, safety, self-determination, and legal reporting requirements.
3. Apply Reamer’s Seven-Step Ethical Decision-Making Model to work through real-world ethical dilemmas across different age groups and settings.
4. Demonstrate strategies to explain, document, and justify ethical decisions