Professional boundaries that promote dignity and rights in social work practice

Kapelj, Ana (author)

In this essay I present some of my thoughts on the issue of boundaries in the professional relationship between service users and social workers. As a graduate student of social work, I had an opportunity to discuss ethical dilemmas in an international perspective in one of my courses. A guest professor, who provided international perspectives, was Prof. Kim Strom from UNC at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, USA. The lectures offered a fresh perspective that raised many questions about thick and thin boundaries in social work – especially when approaching social work by following prevailing guidelines for social work in Slovenia requiring us to co-create solutions through dialogue with service users, keeping in mind that service users are actually the ones who are the experts from experience. In this way, the working relationship seeks to foster a sense of partnership between social workers and service users. In this essay I would like to challenge the idea of rigid boundaries in social work and explore the possibility of fluid boundaries, keeping in mind that boundaries should reflect their main purpose, which I believe is to protect human dignity.

• Language: English
• Keywords: boundaries, human dignity, human rights, codes of ethics
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.03 - Short Scientific Article
• Organization: FSD - Faculty of Social Work
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: Str. 450–456
• Numbering: Vol. 16, no. 4
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-143696
• ISSN on article: 1749-6543
• DOI: 10.1080/17496535.2022.2033396
• Publication date in RUL: 09.01.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Ethics & social welfare
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1749-6543
• COBISS.SI-ID: 518833177

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• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.