Ethics #1:

             In response to Prime Minister Brown’s question of, “How can the interests of an individual nation be reconciled with the greater good of humanity?” I feel America is one of the greatest nations in the world.  America does care about humanity and has shown how it cares by providing aid to countries in a state of emergency, such as the Philippines after the typhoon, Japan after the tsunami.  America helps their own people by providing families that have children with Medicaid and families with or without children, with food stamps.  America helps their citizens by providing them with unemployment insurance, laws and policies to help keep people safe and out of harm’s way.  I feel these decisions are made due to ethics and morals of humanity.  For instance, there are laws that do have ethical standards to keep people safe and out of harm’s way, such as rape, murder, theft and battery.  There are people that break these laws and do not uphold the ethical standards for another human being and are often prosecuted for such criminal activities.   I feel America morals have taken a step down per se, from what they used to be.

            When looking at America versus the rest of the world, I feel there are many horrifying events involving humans going on everyday around the world.  For instance, human trafficking is a world-wide problem as “Half the Sky” has portrayed.  Many people in different countries are not receiving the healthcare they should and could if only there were people around that could and would alter the care.  There are so many women that die during childbirth today in other countries.  Healthcare in America today does not see even one-fourth of women dying during childbirth in America as in other countries. I feel America can make a difference to these other countries by modeling good ethics and educating the rest of the world and having the rest of the world analyze and make good choices for all people in the world.  I do not feel one nation can manage the entire world but I feel one nation can make a great model and educate the rest of the world.

Ethics Question 2:

As a social worker you are faced with ethical decisions on a daily basis.  I know this from working with social workers at Family and Children Services.  Although I was only the administrative assistant, I was closely involved in the social workers job.  I remember one day I decided to take my break in the observation room.  The observation room consisted of a little room not much bigger than a large walk-in closet that had one wall with a large window.  I could see into the visiting room but the people inside the room could not see me.  I loved to spend my breaks in that room because I wanted to become a social worker and therefore, wanted to observe the social workers in action per se.  However, this particular day I was very upset after observing a conversation between a social worker and a child that was in foster care.  The social worker was explaining to this child, whom was approximately six years old, about court and how the child would have to get up on the stand and tell the judge and everybody in the courtroom how this child’s father beat him/her.  The child looked directly at the social worker and said, “But my daddy never hit me”.  The social worker became angry and stated to the child, “No, no, no, you have to get up from your chair, walk over to the steps, walk up those steps, sit in the chair next to the judge and you have to tell him that he did hit you”.  I was appalled at what I was hearing!  I knew this was wrong and very unethical.  Additionally, according to “The Center for Ethical Decision Making, the family has a right to privacy, which I would assume the social worker also has a right to privacy, but on the same token, what about the family?  If the child states that his/her father did not commit this alleged crime, why would a social worker get upset and tell the child that he/she must get on the stand and tell the judge that the father did commit the crime?  I was very upset because I knew this was very wrong but I was really good friends with this social worker.  I thought about this for the duration of the day and part of the next day.  Finally, during a meeting I brought the incident up and explained that perhaps I should not have heard what I heard but I explained that I felt this was very unethical and should not be tolerated.  I was told that it was very unethical and the social worker was reprimanded for this taking place.  I felt awful for getting this social worker into trouble but I also felt horrible for the family if this father did not do this to his child.  Come to find out, this child had a blood disease and the child was not lying about the incident.  The child’s blood would not coagulate the way it was supposed to and as a result of that would obtain horrific looking hematomas.