Ethical and Legal Issues, Interviewing Children Reported as Abused or Neglected

Ethical Dilemma

Social work and legal ethics may be in conflict when the matter at hand is interviewing child victims, because of different goals of the social service and criminal justice systems. In 2004, approximately 3 million children were reported to child abuse and neglect hotlines across the United States. Approximately 87,000 children were determined to be victims of abuse or neglect. When a report suggests serious injury due to physical abuse, sexual abuse, or severe neglect, some states require that a district attorney decide whether a prosecutor or child protective services worker will oversee the investigation. Legal and ethical implications follow from this decision, because social workers, unless they are working for a prosecutor as a forensic specialist, and law enforcement personnel have different objectives. Social workers are concerned mainly with providing services to ameliorate the effects of victimization and to rehabilitate families; law enforcement personnel and forensic social workers are concerned with acquiring information to aid in the apprehension and punishment of offenders.

Professional Ethics

The ethical codes that guide the practice of social workers and attorneys create an obligation for each to serve their clients. When an attorney is serving a pros-ecutorial function, the attorney's client is his or her governmental employer. The attorney is charged with protecting the public by enabling the apprehension and prosecution of criminals. For social workers the question “Who is the client?” is not as easily answered. Whether employed in the private or public sector, social workers have an ethical obligation to their clients, to the agency that employs them, and, for some in the private sector, to a unit of government that financially supports the services they provide. For a social worker, conflict may result because public policy requires a worker to temporarily set aside his or her concern for providing treatment-focused services in favor of the state's interest in prosecuting offenders. As acknowledged in Ethical Standard 1.01 of the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers:

Forensic Interviews

In the 1960s, when laws mandating reporting of child abuse and neglect were being drafted, an issue under discussion was whether an investigation should be conducted by social workers or police. The decision favoring social workers was the result of the profession's rehabilitative mission, and the notion that child abuse and neglect involving family members should not be treated in the criminal justice system. In recent years there has been a shift away from the original view to one that favors criminal prosecutions. Joint social worker-police investigations are becoming common; and legislation that requires child protective agencies to report to the police or to a prosecutor's office serious cases of abuse or neglect has been enacted in the majority of states. This shift has led to a growth in forensic social work.

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