PROGRAMME OF DIRECT SOCIAL WORK ETHICS

Advocacy in action
Direct social work takes always the side of the powerless. It enhances the power of the people and takes care that they are heard. It does not do the work instead of the people but with the. It empowers them to take control of their lives. Direct social work rejects the role of an intermediary and the task that are prescribed by the system of exclusion, marginalisation and disablement. Advocacy instead.

Ethics of the active resistance

The task of social work is to denounce the injustice, oppression, discrimination; to put on fight against them and for social justice, empowerment and equal cooperation of the people. Direct social work is actively struggling against all modes of closing and compulsion. It resists all degradation, devaluation and stigmatisation of people. It never concedes to the logic of exclusion. It does not only care for mending the wrongs but is actively and directly preventing them to arise.

Ethics of non-reductionism (against depersonalisation, reduction to a problem)

Social work accepts the whole human personality and does not concede to the reductions to a label. Direct social work declines treating people like things. A man or a woman has always his or her will, desire, word and deed. We avoid reducing human distress to one state social work traverses many plateaux simultaneously.

Testimony on suffering
Direct social work intercepts the stories that would otherwise be unheard. It gives legitimacy to human distress and takes it as a platform for further action. Social work does not leave people alone. In the stories about peoples suffering it tries to find the sources of power and helps to create new life stories. Priorities of direct social work are: witnessing social, economic and personal distress, direct linking of people for action and organising the response to distress.

Ethics of action
Witnessing, which is an important function of social work anyway, gets an activist charge of the movement. Things need to be changed. Social work goes from being a silent witness of human misery onto becoming an amplifier of the voice of the oppressed. Talking to people should not be an end in itself; it has to become a starting point of direct action. Direct social work supports and develops talking and deciding that enhance power of common action.

Community ethics
Direct social work enters communities, to be close to the people in their environment. Personal distress is social. Human distress is not matter of an individual but it is seen as a reflection of the social situation of the person. Social work is bound to the ethics of connecting people, groups, themes and different levels of existence; it is not limited to material, experiential, legal or social dimension of the issue.

Opposing confidentiality as silence

Direct social work is committed to safeguard personal stories but confidentiality in social work must not mean silence but trust not to be abandoned. The injustice must be made public.

Direct responsibility.
Social worker is in the first place responsible to a person and not subjected to the rules of the system. Social work is operating on the basis of users mandate. Mandate, mission and responsibility are given by people themselves and not by state, charity or even capital. Social work must not concede to imposed value systems and notions of the human nature, it has to stem from people, their social reality and their dreams.

Courage and naivety

Social worker has to have courage to fight for a fellow human being. Has to dare the limits to improve human condition. Has to believe what people say, that is fair and right (not only nave) Being nave is believing in a different world even the odds may be against it. It about personal engagement and commitment to it.

Knowledge
Social worker never ceases to learn. To learn from people and to give own knowledge to common use in construction of solutions. He or she learns from experience and from experts of experience. Theory is a tool or a weapon re-created by the use. Social work needs knowledge of doing (praxis) and not knowledge of ruling. Direct social work uses the knowledge of people, hidden, secret and ignored knowledge to subvert dominant notions which oppress peoples desires.

Independence and linking

Direct social work links with all social movements that are fighting for empowerment of the powerless, for new ways of living, working and creating together. Social worker has to have a critical understanding of the areas and disciplines that can be used for improvement of peoples situations. Simultaneously it resists any direct or indirect appropriation of the social work by other disciplines (psychologisation, medicalization, manageralisation or jurisation) and consequent alienation of human everyday existence.

Autonomy
Direct social work does not use the rules as an excuse and apology for unethical action basic guide in doing is ethics. It accepts only those formal deeds that empower people; it does not restrict its action by the rules. It declines to be exploited to mend mistake of the others and to be a prolongation of repressive organs and institutions. It resists also bagatelisation and exploitation of voluntary work for austerity and social cuts, for the reasons of creating income and substitution of the professional work with cheap and dubious work of others. It resists expropriation of people who work socially for their own good and expropriation of social work as such.

Being relaxed and having fun

Social work forms egalitarian and equal relationships with people, approaches them as a person to a person, not an expert, a professional from the power position. It uses a language that people understand and with humour and honesty comes close to the people. Heavy situations and moments are lit and discharged by humour. Direct social work is against setting boundaries between the people also between the users and workers. The issue of distance and closeness is resolved continuously and by the way, as it is done among the people in their interactions.

User perspective
Social worker must derive his work from users perspective, from his concrete life situation and attitude to it. Solutions cannot be given in advance and just offered to choose, the have to arise from common work. Only in this way human dignity will be preserved. Social work has to enable and empower good practices of survival, human perseverance and courage. It has to unearth forgotten, hidden sources of power, strengthen tem and add to their value and legitimacy. It respects the heroic stance of the people that confront the distress and reminds them that they are capable of doing it and that they can overcome.