ABSTRACT
Social workers have to form judgments and make decisions about the kinds of situations they should strive to realise, as worthwhile, from a range of situations all valued, and about the methods to be used to attain ends considered to be 'good' – from a technical, aesthetic, moral, and prudential. The chapter considers how social work 'values' can presently be best understood and what it means to refer to them as values. Thinking of the espoused values of social work as 'listed', in a textbook for instance, obscures differences of substantive content and of mode. Acceptance is one of the values held by social workers in so far as it takes the form of a rule against certain behaviour. The rule can be justified on technical grounds but could also be seen as grounded in a view of human behaviour valued as purposive: acceptance is directed at the point of a person's behaviour despite any appearances to the contrary.
