This document provides an overview and discussion of ethics issues for school social workers presented by Gary R. Schoener. It discusses standards for conduct including roles and responsibilities, ethical principles from the NASW code, and ethical decision making frameworks. It also covers challenges around professional boundaries, dual relationships, confidentiality, communication technologies, social media, and privacy in the digital age. The presentation aims to help social workers navigate complex ethical situations that arise in school settings.

1. Ethics Update
For School Social Workers
Presented by:
Gary R. Schoener, M.Eq., Licensed
Psychologist
Director of Consultation & Training
SCHOOL DISTRICT 279
7 JANUARY 2013

2. • School or Agency rules & policies
• Ethics codes
• Codes of conduct (licensure board)
• Laws & rules
• Standard of care: what a reasonable &
prudent practitioner would do in the
same or similar circumstances
(failure = malpractice)
Standards for Conduct

3. Roles & Responsibilities
• The school & professional as fiduciaries –
position of trust – explicit vs. implicit
warranties – we set the rules
• Supervisory role – the supervisor is responsible
for all actions of the supervisee done within the
scope of employment – vicarious liability
(respondeat superiori) vs. negligent supervision
• Consultation -- is there such a thing as
negligent consultation?

4. NASW Ethical Principles
• Service – duty to help those in need &
solve social problems
• Social Justice – challenge injustice
• Dignity & Worth of Person – respect both
• Importance of Human Relationships –
central importance
• Integrity – behave in trustworthy fashion
• Competence – practice within; enhance
expertise

5. •Beneficence – doing good; helping
•Non-maleficence – avoiding harm
•Autonomy – client’s input and role
•Fidelity – consistent with what
promised
•Justice -- welfare of client vs. others;
fair use of resources – having a basis
to proportion them
Ethical Framework

6. Ethical Decision-Making
• It is often not what is ethical vs.
unethical, but the comparative ethicality
of the options
• This involves weighing which principles
are best dealt with through one option or
another
• What are the likely positive vs. negative
outcomes of choosing a given course of
action?

7. Positive Outcomes Negative Outcomes
Option A ______________ _________________
______________ _________________
______________ _________________
Option B ______________ _________________
______________ _________________
______________ _________________
Decision table or chart

8. Professional boundaries
•Confidentiality
•Parent-child issues
•School vs. individual
•Dual relationships – limit risk, avoid
• Potential exploitation
• Conflict of interest
• Sexual/romantic involvement

9. Dual or multiple relationship
Social workers should not engage in dual or
multiple relationships with current or
former clients in which there is a risk of
exploitation or harm to the client. In
instances where dual or multiple
relationships are unavoidable, social
workers should take steps to protect clients
& are responsible for setting clear,
appropriate, & culturally sensitive
boundaries.

10. Confidentiality
• The IEP Meeting & similar challenges – (a)
group discussion of confidentiality; (b)
private meetings with colleagues from
other fields to work out understandings.
• Specific issues – who needs to know?:
• Girl is pregnant
• Boy involved in gang activity
• Drug or alcohol abuse
• Girl is sexually assaulted

11. Boundaries challenges
•Contact w/ students not on caseload
•Children/relatives of colleagues
•Gifts from parents or students
•Social encounters
•Recovery groups
•Attending funeral, graduation, etc. –
issue of how visible to be

12. Ethical& Practice Challenges
• Suicide intervention – related challenges:
• Keeping up to date -- assessment
• Having consultative resources
• Safety plans
• Intervening w/ dangerousness:
• What do we know about assessment?
• Challenge of talk, writings, internet
posts & what they mean
• Duty to warn or protect

13. Challenges of private knowledge
• CASE 1: You have a case with severe
abuse. You visit your sister and notice the
family lives next door, and her kids are
going over to play in the abuse house.
What actions do you take if any?
• CASE 2: Your brother brags to you how he
fooled child protection into closing a case,
by threatening his wife and kids to deny
the complaint. What action options are
there? What if any should you take?

14. Traditional Boundaries with
regard to Information Access
• Client has access to information about
the professional based on published
biography or revelations, news items
• Professional only has access to
information about client from
disclosures or access granted through
signed releases

15. Self-disclosure by professional
• Are you obligated to answer all of the
student or parent’s questions?
• There are not clear rules on this, and
there is great variability in the field
• What helpful or expected?
• What is risky or ill-advised?
• In general, problematic if too often, too
much, too personal – Most complaint
letters begin with list of alleged self-
disclosures

16. Realities of a small community
• You and client belong to same church,
same social club, same athletic club
• Client lives in same building as a friend of
yours – what are the issues?
• Client interacts with member of your
family, with or without knowing the
connection;
• Former client interacts with you or a
friend or family

17. Traditional Communication
• Communication by traditional mail (now
called “snail mail”);
• Communication by phone during limited
business hours;
• Leave messages on answering machines
for later response;
• Phone calls private, although a message
left might be saved;
• Quick response not expected or promised

18. Communication in today’s world
• Expectation of being able to connect at all
hours, even when professional is away
from office, via cell phones, texting, etc.
• Same is true for emails;
• Emails and text messages create a record;
• Emails can be misdirected or examined by
others – need to warn people about
employer access to work computers

19. Electronic communications/internet
• Minnesota Dept. of Corrections – Policy
103.210 -- Electronic Communications
http://www.doc.state.mn.us/DocPolicy2/
Document/103.210.htm
Effective date: 5/1/12

20. Text Messaging
• A growing number of people do texting
instead of (or in addition to) emailing;
• This is an abbreviated type of message
with less information;
• This the only way to quickly reach people;
• Unlike a phone call, it is silent, so people
can receive and view a text without the
ring of a phone

21. Text Messaging (continued)
• Veterans Crisis Line (800) 273-8255 or text
to 838255 http://veteranscrisisline.net
• Crisis Connection has a program for
texting in 7 counties in northeast Minn. –
they are receiving more texts from young
people in a day than they previously
received as phone calls in a month.
• Some use for follow-up or crisis contacts

22. Smartphones & Tablets & Apps
• The Therapist May See You Anytime,
Anywhere (NY Times, 2/13/12)
• Cognitive bias modification (CBM) using
an app for social anxiety which directs
attention away from hostile faces
• Nader Amir at San Diego State –
30”/week for anxiety disorder
• Daniel Pine at NIMH – 40 children with
chronic anxiety

23. More apps
• Hazelden’s Field Guide to Life
• iMedicalApps -- examines new apps
• Mobilyze – “a therapist in your pocket”
• Can be a source of reference information
or assist the practitioner
• Can enable a client to log in personal data
and keep focused on goals
• In future may use sensors

24. Social Networking Sites
• Facebook -- >750 million users
• 92% of SNS users are on Facebook;
• 50% log in on any given day;
• Facebook – “friend” vs. “deferred”?
• Posts from you, friend, relative, kid
• 29% use MySpace; 18% Linkedin;
• 50 million Twitter – 13% of SNS

25. Networking for support
• Pro-Ana blogs: social support, ways to
cope, self-expression – but risk of
exposure & question about whether it
encourages (“pro-ana” on Wikipedia)
• Bipolar: www.dbsalliance.org
• Victims of abuse: rape and sexual assault
victim bulletin boards
• Do an internet search about any
condition or problem to see what is there

26. More visibility issues
• If you use a family photograph on
Facebook, even with the highest privacy
settings people see that photo;
• Even if you don’t show your family to the
world, friends or family may show your
photo or a family activity;
• 90% of US physicians are on Facebook or
Linked in or some social media.

27. Hazards Never Imagined (for staff
or even clients)
• Happy slapping – assaulting someone while
others film it (usually on cell phone)
• Sexting – sending racy photos of yourself or
someone else
• Filming and/or broadcasting a party, or
other event
• Live broadcast using cell phone or camera
(privacy invasion case – Tyler Clementi
suicide at Rutgers – Dharun Ravi, age 19,
convicted in Feb. 2012.)

28. Hazards Never Imagined (cont.)
• Fake profiles
• Internet harassment – which can lead to
great distress the same as any type of
bullying (1/3 to 1/2 of adolescents?);
• Fake emails & chat screen names – so one
can harass secretly;
• Massive Defriending – being shut-out by
groups of friends or classmates on a social
networking site such as Facebook

29. Undressing your Friends (or
enemies)
• FalseFlesh.com, billed
as “adult image editing
software” allows you to
paste someone’s face
onto a nude body
• “Easily make any
picture a nude picture
in minutes”

30. Cases to lose sleep over
• Draker v. Schreiber (2006, 2008) two
students created My Space site with fake
photos trashing Asst. Principal – Anna
Draker sued them and their parents
without success;
• Megan Meier, driven to suicide by “Josh,”
created by the mother of a girl she was
having a dispute with;

31. Cases (cont.)
• Ryan Hallingan, middle school student
with a learning disorder was the focus of
bullying & suggestions he was gay. He
hanged himself after a girl who claimed
to be his friend told him publicly he was a
“loser” and that she had been pretending
to be just like him so she could post their
conversations on line and humiliate him.

32. Cases (cont.)
• Ghyslain Raza, the “Star Wars Kid,” a
Canadian adolescent made a video in 2002
pretending to fight with a light saber as a
school project. Another student posted it,
adding music, and 900 million saw it on the
web. Raza was taunted repeatedly and
dropped out of school. After treatment for
depression he got support, some from the
internet, graduated law school, and heads a
foundation for preservation.

33. Cases (cont.)
• Jesse Logan, Ohio teenager, sent nude
pictures of herself to her boyfriend. After
they broke up he sent them to other girls
who circulated them on line. She was
called a slut & ridiculed and started
skipping school. Jesse went public with
her story via a TV interview in May 2008,
but two months later hanged herself. A
classic example of the dangers of sexting.

34. Cases (cont.)
• 4/21/11 Buffalo, NY. Police invade home
with assault rifles; throw man on floor;
call him a “pervert” and “pedophile” and
confiscate all computers and cell phones in
the house including those of his wife and
daughter. He did not have a passcode on
his wireless router and it was utilized by
someone nearby to download
pornography. This can be done by
neighbor, or from a car.

35. Other networking issues
• Caring Bridge – sites related to illness:
therapist’s illness?; posting on client’s
bridge?;
• Blogs -- posting responses;
• Sites focused on special interests:
• Client alerts you to site
• You encounter client on a site
• Former client alerts you to site

36. Google & Net Research
• Should you “Google” a client?
• Emergency Situation – identity issue;
• Client denies suicide history but has
prior attempts;
• Reality check on claims by client;
• Checking on criminal justice history;
• Screening for sex offenders

37. Google & Net Research (cont.)
•What if the client googles you?
• Intern entering therapy googles her
therapist and then wonders if she’s
“blown it” by doing this.
• What if they tell you? What if you
suspect?
• Sites that evaluate professionals –
YELP has >25 million hits a month

38. Some thoughts
• The internet creates a “small town” or
ethnic subgroup for all of us;
• With some areas of work such as criminal
justice, there may be greater challenges –
clientele, role of security;
• Health care rating sites are likely to grow
and include more therapists –
healthgrades.com, vitals.com

39. Self protection
• Be aware of your web-presence
• “Google” yourself
• If there is false information, contact site
administrator to get things changed
• Should you control on-line presence by
expanding it? Should you post your own
www.google/com/profile?
• Collegial discussion – develop standards

40. On line reviews
• It’s hard to know what they mean – they
are not systematic;
• The data about your work or practice may
be in error or outdates;
• Many times there are only a few who do
a review so there can be a heavy
influence of just a few ratings
• Consumers focus on manner – civility,
perceived warmth, etc.

41. Consent and Disclosure
• What ground rules will you have for a
given school or program for googling?
• If you do “Google” someone, will you
disclose this to them?
• What rules if any will you ask clients to
follow as regards the internet?
• Will you ask them to maintain any
privacy or respect any boundaries?

42. Communications & Social Media
Policy (examples)
• Email: Email only to arrange or modify
appointments. Do not email content or
important things we should discuss face
to face…..
• Rating or review sites: Info. on them is
questionable; I cannot respond to them
and do not need positive ratings; ask me
about any concerns you have about my
services.

43. Communications & Social
Media Policy (continued)
• Text messaging: please do not use to contact
me – leave phone message for time changes,
etc.; email not as good but at ….
• Internet interaction: do not use wall
postings or other means of communication
on the internet – none are private
• Blog or Twitter: I do not follow you on either
– if there are things you want to share, bring
them to a session

44. Communications & Social
Media Policy (continued)
• Friending: It is my practice to not accept
contact or “friend” requests from clients
on social networking sites such as
Facebook or Linkedin. They can
compromise privacy and also complicate
our helping relationship.
• Website or Facebook Page: If you have
questions, bring them in a session. Please
don’t interact on the internet.

45. Communications & Social
Media Policy (continued)
• Search Engines: I do not research my
clients on Google or other search engines.
There may be occasions where you will
direct me to look up something related to
your life or experience, and if so we can
discuss it at a future meeting. If you
choose to check me out on the web I
would note that not all information is
accurate, and would suggest that we
discuss anything which you find troubling.

46. Communications & Social
Media Policy (continued)
• Recording: Unless we have specifically
discussed it, there will be no recording of
our meetings or any phone conversation. All
of our discussions are private.
• Records: I will maintain the records of our
work together as confidential although some
billing-related information may be
communicated securely. Please remember
that any notes you make can compromise
your privacy if not carefully protected.

48. Gary R. Schoener, Licensed Psychologist, M.Eq.
Director of Consultation and Training
2421 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55404
(612) 870-0565 Ext. 107
grschoener@walkin.org
www.WalkIn.org
CONSULTATION &
TRAINING INSTITUTE