ABSTRACT
Social work is a value-laden profession. While social workers may not agree about all values, the importance of professional values is central to the practice of social work.
Values are best defined as beliefs, while ethics are defined as the rules of conduct that embody those beliefs. This chapter focuses particularly on the social work professional ethics that are informed by social work values. Ethical codes and their application to practice in various contexts are explored. The relationship between ethics and the law, and the ways in which social workers manage challenging ethical conflicts and dilemmas, are discussed.
