Critical Incident Analysis in Social Work

This assignment focuses on a critical incident experienced by a student working as a part-time social worker while studying full-time. It analyzes the ethical dilemmas encountered, highlighting the impact of personal experiences and professional responsibilities. The author reflects on their decision-making process, emphasizing the importance of adhering to ethical norms and values in social work practice. The assignment also discusses the need for a thorough understanding of social work principles and critical thinking in complex situations.

Introduction to Diversity, Ethics and Values
for Social Work Practice
M01
Introduction
According to Flanagan (1954), incidents are any “observable human activity that is
sufficiently complete in itself to permit inferences and predictions to be made about the
person performing the act”. These observable activities occur every day and
everywhere. One such occurrence that I will critically analyse is one that happened in
my work place in the summer of 2011.
I work with a mental clinic within the NHS mental health unit providing support for
service users with mental illness from mild-depression to psychosis. Our service to
these service users who also live within the premise of the clinic is by proxy extended
to their friends and family who come visiting, ensuring that they receive the right
support that helps them relate with the service users in a quiet and engaging manner.
At times the service users become highly erratic and unstable and this puts pressure
on myself, the nurses and my colleagues as it increases the workload we do to calm
the service users and help them get better in a social inclusive environment. These
increased responsibilities and workload for every employee demands that every
employee puts more effort to ensuring that service users are well taken care of in a
way that they get better quickly. A close colleague however started showing signs of
stress. Tade became a student more than a year ago and was unable to pay his

SI6662W
school fees. Neother did he had any access to student loan. He has frantically looked
for ways to make up payments for his school fee and this has reduced the level of his
concentration at work. He had been working full time while also schooling fulltime so
as to make enough money to pay his school fee. In recent times he had become quite
lackadaisical to service users especially if they were not ones he had personal
relationships with; barely giving them the needed attention to the extent one of the
service user he was detailed to was screaming at the family member who came to visit
for hours under his watch. This attention to detail had slowed down and other team
members had started to pick up some of his duties for him. I was concerned that if this
goes on he might make a big mistake that would tarnish the reputation of the trust and
thereby going against the professional values as well as ethics of social care work.
Page 2 of 10

SI6662W
At this point, there was sympathy towards social worker (Tade) while he was informing
about the present situation. It was further clear that Tade being a bank worker may not
be in a position to get enough shifts. Hence reporting the matter agency would further
put Tade on pressure regarding the issue of his school fee. Giving this incident, the
author was also aware that the attention given to service users at the particular time
was not adequate and thus depriving the service users of their right to quality service.
Using the Lister CIA framework, the author continues to analyse the incident by
looking at the initial response to the incident, issues and dilemmas highlighted by the
incident, outcome of the incident and finally learning from the incident.
Initial response to the incident
Although the author was not a student at the time of the incident, as a practicing social
worker the author was aware that poor service rendered to service user was against
GSCC now Health and Care Professional Council (HCPC) values. The author’s
thought and feelings at that time was to help Tade through this trying time by helping
him cover for some shift in a way that it did not affect his own delivery of quality
service to his own service users. The author’s first thought was that Tade’s selective
attention to service users based on one’s relationship with the service user does not
agree does not agree with HCPC’s professional values as it might tarnish the image of
the profession if such actions are known to the public and that this actions do not
show that he feels accountable to the professional regulator, and that he has an
organisational responsibility to report this to the agency so that corrective measures
can be taken. However, the author is equally aware that the agency had terminated
the contract of two employees in the past. The author knows that the agency's position
Page 3 of 10

SI6662W
about quality of service, right to service and marginalisation was one that if the case
was heard, Tade would have to leave the employment.
Issues and dilemmas
Several issues can be identified in this incident. According to Copps and Watts (2003)
“an incident is a complex phenomenon that does not occur independently of the actor
but in many cases is a change in perception and awareness that stimulates the actor
into action”.
This refers to the nature of incidents as not independent or in isolation thus one
cannot critically analyse and incident in isolation. As one looks deeply into an incident
to examine and identify the issues around the incident, one begins to make an
everyday incident a critical one.
In conducting a critical evaluation and analysis of this case, the author questions the
elements that constitutes this case. Does the case consist of professional issues as
described in the last section? Does it have issues of diversity or rights? Or are there
issues of values and ethics in the incident (Lister & Crisp., 2007).
From this incident, several issues can be identified as follows. As described, above
there are issues of professionalism on Tade’s part as it seems he did not consider that
his decision and action could cost the social work profession a great deal if they
became public knowledge. One could also argue that his actions were done without
the full and critical reflection to identify the resulting effects of his action on the service
users as well as their families. There are also the issues of the agency that had
terminated the employment of its staff without critically considering to identify,
distinguish, evaluate and integrate information and evidences specific about the
Page 4 of 10

SI6662W
incidents before making an ethical decision indicating that they had dealt with the
incident in isolation without considering the situational factors that surround the
incidents giving rise to the reciprocal causation (Healy, 2005; Banks, 2006). For
example, Consequentialism argues that nothing is good or bad, however their
consequences categorises these choices as good or bad. Would Tade’s choice to
take responsibility for professional learning by enrolling for a degree in social work be
a good choice if he had had money to pay for his school fee and had not become
pressured or was that choice a bad one since when he enrolled as a full time student
his commitment to the duty of care to the service users have dwindled?
The argument above can therefore be extended to include context and organisation as
there seems to be a lack of proactivity in the part of the agency with respect to present
case study.
The issue of diversity is also noticed. This is as Tade responds to the needs of only
those service users who are in a relationship with him. This depicts a clear case of
discrimination to the other service users. According to Scourfield (2002), there is a
potential problem of reconciliation of anti-discriminatory/anti-oppressive values and
social care workers daily practice. Such marginalisation questions the ethics of care
provided.
It can be established now that there exist a virtually an issue with the incident in
consideration to the PCF framework from both the social worker’s perspective (duties
and responsibility of the social worker) (Teater, 2014; Tompson, 2001), the
organisational perspective (obligation of management), the right of the service users
and also the author’s inability to make a decision to report the incident. These
inicdents are likely to impact the service users in many ways. The discrimation may
reduce the trust of patients on the services provided. The lack of support form tade
Page 5 of 10

SI6662W
may fyrtherr make them feel more depressive. There is also a chance that service
users may start deirititing the reputation of the hospital.
In this regard, the best practice seems to helping out Tade wqith the issues being
faced by him. A proper support is the need of hour from the management seeng the
scenario being faced by Tade.
Furter the need on part of agency is also to have a clear understanding of the whole
incident and as well as the values that compete giving the human agency at play in
the judgement process.
One obvious dilemma is the issue of duty of care vs comradery. As Tade’s colleague,
The author at the time of the incident felt he had to protect his colleague as incidents
like this is only a phase and it will pass while they remain colleagues for a long time
coming against Tade’s duty of care to the service users as one of the principles and
code that guide the practice (HCP, PCF, HCPC etc). Tade’s obligation as a social
worker detailed to care for the service user in a certain way imposed by virtue of his
employment with the agency demands that he adheres to the standards of the
profession while he is at work. This two values makes it difficult to make a decision as
the author understands the human agency drivers that have influenced Tade’s recent
behaviour while the author also knows that irrespective of this there is an obligatory
responsibility on Tade not to take care of service users according to the service level
agreement with the client.
In this respect, the ethical p[rimniples as wellas set of social values to be adhered by
Tade and other social workers are as follows;
 There is a need to maintain abnd develop requisite job sskills and competence.
 The skills should not be used for torture or terrorism.
Page 6 of 10

SI6662W
 There must be a maintaince of integrity on part of social workers. The relations
of trust that the service uses keep on social workers should not be abused in
any form.
 Social workers are required to show compassion, empathy and care towards
service users.
Another obvious dilemma is the issue of information sharing vs confidentiality. There is
a burden of responsibility to report what we see going wrong. One wrong doing is
Tade’s marginalisation of service users. However, Tade only told him about his
personal issues in confidence. This puts the Author in a difficult position to make an
ethical decision as reporting this introduces and breach in his confidentiality
agreement with Tade while not sharing information with the agency also introduces
the problem of information hoarding.
Outcome
Based on the conflicting principles narrated above, the author at the time did not
inform the agency. However, he spoke with Tade with a threat to report the incident to
the agency if there no visible change in 2 months. Tade struggled to make visible
changes and decided to leave the agency altogether. This action was shocking to the
Author as he had made the decision not to share information with the agency in order
to protect Tade’s employment.
Looking back, the author now knows he should have gone further to complete his
decision making until a clear action line/plan is decided as advised by Clifford & Burke
(2009); Gray & Web (2010). According to Gray & Web (2010), a further question of
risk and consequence might help the author to come to a better decision. For
example, what if the service user and the family member reported the incident? What
if when the agency gets to find out both the author and Tade would be sacked?
Compassion, empathy and care.
Page 7 of 10

SI6662W
Learning
There is so much the author has learnt from this incident which has also helped to
form his own decision having become a student himself and still working with same
agency. For the same, tade requires following all the ethics and values in order to be a
good social workers. At the time of making any decisions it is highly important to follow
all the ethical norms. With the help of these learnings and morale values a person is
able to deal with the facts of the situation first before considering the human agency
influences as there is a high tendency that such understanding makes the decision
making process more difficult. Also the author made a decision recently to now work
part-time while a full time student who has taken responsibility for his professional
learning so that the same issue of lack duty to care and marginalisation does not
arise. Going forward the author has identified that there is a need fully understand the
dominance of principles in social work and critical decision making.
Page 8 of 10

SI6662W
References
Cope, J. & Watts, G. (2000) 'Learning by doing. An exploration of experience, critical incidents and
reflection in entrepreneurial learning', International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavioiur and
Research, 6(3), pp. 104-124
David Tripp (1993) Critical incidents in teaching: developing professional judgement, London:
Routledge.
Derek Clifford (2009) Anti-oppressive ethics and values in social work, New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Flanagan, J.C. (1954) 'The critical incident technique', Psychological Bulletin, 51(4), pp. 327-358.
HCPC (July 2008) Standards of conduct, performance and ethics, Available at: http://www.hpc-
uk.org/aboutregistration/standards/standardsofconductperformanceandethics/ (Accessed: 2nd
December 2015).
Healy K (2005) Social work theories in context, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Page 9 of 10

SI6662W
Jonathan Scourfield (2002) Gender and child protection, New York: Palgrave.
Lister, P.G., & Crisp, B.R (2007) 'Critical incident analyses: A practice learning tool for students
and practitioners', Practice, 19(1), pp. 47-60 [Online]. Available at:
http://moodlecurrent.gre.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/191231/mod_resource/content/1/CIA.pdf (Accessed:
10 December 2015).
Mel Gray, Stephen A. Webb (2010) Ethics and value perspectives in social work, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Sarah Banks (2006) Ethics and values in social work, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Teater, Barbra (2014) An Introduction To Applying Social Work Theories And Methods, : McGraw-
Hill Education (UK).
Thompson, Neil (2001) Anti-discriminatory practice, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Page 10 of 10