Answer

Ethical Issues

            In my social work practice, my personal culture has once contravened social work practice code of ethics. The incident in question involved a client whom I had worked with who presented me with a gift. Code of ethics in social work practice discourages social workers from participating in circumstances that create conflict of interest. A social worker should avoid taking advantage of the client or profiting or benefiting from a professional relationship in any way. Scenes social workers should demonstrate their primary commitment in helping the client. To make the matters worse, the client was my age-mate and of the opposite sex; accepting the gift meant that we were building closer personal relationships that could have negatively impacted our professional relationships and interactions in the future. In that case, I was aware and cautious not to create dual relationships with my client; despite the fact that I accepted the gift (National Association of Social Workers (NASW), 2017). However, NASW (2017) requires social workers to demonstrate a sense of cultural awareness and to promote social diversity. Being a collectivist society, Latinos values a sense of belonging, love, safety, respect and self-esteem (Ortiz, 2017). Likewise, I come from the community and the client might have felt the need to appreciate my services since I am one of their own and had felt more comfortable to work with me. On my side, I was aware that it was unethical to accept gifts from the client. On the other hand, I was raised in my culture to belief that is it rude to reject gifts. Therefore, I took the gift, not to benefit from it but to let me complete planned sessions with the client. My rationale was that if I had rejected the gift, it could have prematurely ended our professional relationships.