HS651- Law, Policy and Ethics
Giving Voice to Values - Case Report and Presentation Support and Guidance
Dr Kostis Roussos
What?
Case Report
Reflecting upon your placement experience, you will submit a case outline in report format exploring the needs of service user(s), the legislative and ethical frameworks around the case and the responsibilities and accountability of service providers in the case.
Deadline to submit: Friday 22nd April 2022 to Jordan A. Cohen
What?
Presentation
You are going to lead a 10 minutes presentation/discussion based on a report of 1,000 words that you will prepare and circulate to your group at least two weeks in advance.
Presentation day: Friday 6th May 2022
General guidance
You are going to lead a 10 minutes presentation/discussion (roughly 5 mins for each part) based on a report of 1,000 words that you will prepare and circulate to your group at least two weeks in advance. Your paper will provide a case outline in report format. You will draw on the Giving Voice to Values seminar to develop the case report. The case report is tutor marked and the seminar will be tutor assessed.
What are your core values?
§ What are your values as a human being?
§ Do these values reinforce or clash with the ethical values of social work? What about values in policy, organizational, and practice areas?
A Tale of Two Stories
Objective
§ To reflect on your own experience at voicing and acting on your values
§ To discover what has helped you to voice your values; and/or what may have inhibited you from doing so
General guidance
Draw on the GVV workshop to develop the case report focusing on the following themes:
§ Explore tensions between principles such as autonomy, equality, diversity, social justice, etc.
§ Identify and examine ambiguities and ethical dilemmas in policy and practice and apply the “Giving Voice to Values” approach to resolve ethical tensions
§ Consider the impact of contradictions between policy and professional practice.
Case outline
§ Give a brief narrative of how you came to be working with the case focussing on the details that are relevant to the discussion you want to have (e.g. you might want to briefly introduce specific people and organisations involved, or you might want to use the case outline to refer to relevant law, policy and/or guidance from regulators).
§ To structure your case study use the three themes identified in the assignment description (tension between principles, applying voice to values approach to ambiguities and dilemmas, and contradictions between policy and practice).
§ You can raise specific questions that you would then discuss in your presentation.
Writing the case outline
§ What is the decision/behaviour that I think is right?
§ What are the main arguments against it that I am likely to encounter? What reasons and rationalisations am I likely to encounter?
§ What’s at stake for key players (those for and against the right action/decision)?
§ What are our most powerful responses to the reasons/rationalisations and to whom should they be addressed, when and in what context?
Voice to Values Presentation
§ Your role here is to lead and participate in discussion.
§ When it is your turn to lead try to avoid presenting the case outline again as the group will already have read it. Instead draw their attention to something specific in the case as a starting point for discussion or that can generate debate.
§ When others are leading the discussion you need to evidence your engagement (e.g. prepare specific questions of your own to raise about the case).
§ The point of the exercise is to have a discussion that helps the person leading the seminar identify things that could help them make progress in their case or constructive changes to their practice for the future.
Planning/Rehearsing
§ Script out your response / develop an action plan
§ Get feedback from a peer / mentor
§ Rehearse your response
§ Practice give us confidence à we are more comfortable with voicing our values when needed
Voice to Values Approach
One crucial thing to remember is that the Giving Voice to Values approach is concerned with both determining what the right thing to do is and making sure that when we do the right thing we have the resources and resilience necessary for engaging in sustainable practice
General guidance
§ The assignment is being assessed as a whole (80% of the module mark) There is no division of the available marks between the case outline and the discussion. Evidence will be drawn from both the case outline and the discussion to support the final assessment decision.
§ Remember no one is expected to have all the answers and we are trying to focus on being good and getting better rather
than being right or wrong. Respect the work of your colleagues and provide productive feedback and support.
Further Readings
§ Mary C. Gentile, Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right (2010)
§ Graham Ferris, “Ethical Action” (Ch 9) in Uses of Values in Legal Education pp 241 – 253 (2015)
§ Vivien Holmes (2015) ‘Giving Voice to Values’: enhancing students’ capacity to cope with ethical challenges in legal practice, Legal Ethics, 18:2, 115-137, DOI: 10.1080/1460728x.2015.1115698