ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the significance of different ethical frameworks to the practice of social group work. The importance of values has been emphasized, as has the opportunity that groups offer to learn and teach about moral reasoning via group process. In order to consider the place of ethics and values in social group work, an understanding of group work is necessary. Two universal values of social group work are interdependence and participation. Groups with more than one leader have the potential for value conflicts between the co-workers. Group work is practiced in a variety of situations with diverse purposes and practice methods. The ethical framework that speaks most closely to the moral universe of the people who experience social work is virtue ethics. There is an ethical imperative for groupworkers to evaluate groups and, in the spirit of the core value of empowerment in group work, to do so in ways that are member-led.
