Should Social Work Clients Have the Right to Effective Treatment?

Abstract

Currently, the codes of ethics developed for social workers by NASW and other professional associations do not suggest that clients have the right to receive effective, empirically validated treatment. In addition, the codes place no explicit emphasis on empirically validated treatments when referring to social work competence, education, research, supervision, or the profession as a whole. Does the social work client have the right to receive effective treatment when such interventions are known to be available? Should the NASW Code of Ethics include such requirements to encourage more responsible behavior on the part of social work practitioners? This article considers some of the issues involved in this debate and offers suggestions as to how codes of ethics could be modified to include clients' right to receive effective treatment and social workers' obligation to be educated about and to provide such treatment.

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