ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews ethical guidelines and regulatory practices for social work in Canada and explains legal concepts like consent, capacity, guardianship, and substitute decision-making. It describes legislation on health care consent and substitute decision-making across Canada as well as social work guidance and roles. The chapter highlights Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) as an example of a moral, legal, and ethical issue that social workers need to be prepared to address in practice. Contemporary issues like first available bed policies, MAiD, austerity measures, and decisions related to the rationing of health and social care represent debates within direct and indirect practice that have ethical, legal, and moral dimensions. The chapter addresses these emerging issues and applies them to the context of social work practice and anti-oppression gerontology guidelines. In terms of the relationship between federal and provincial professional association guidelines and provincial professional and regulatory body guidelines, the extent to which one supersedes the other also varies.
