Sometimes, We're Trying So Hard Not to Be Judgmental

Several days ago, I had an academic debate with one of my friends. The proposition was as follows: "Should social worker just comply to what the client WANTS?"

My friend was a supporter of the notion that social workers should respect everything that the client wishes to do and if possible, to help the client to get it too. The example topic that we discussed was a man who had a high blood pressure but still wanted to eat red meat. So, my friend said that it is a social worker's responsibility to present to the client the pros and cons of every option and decision and after that, it is up to the client on what he or she wishes to choose. Even if he chose to still eat red meat, then social worker needs to respect that.

And I am a believer of the notion that sometimes, you have to tell the client that some of what he or she wants is not good for herself. So, even if the client still wanted to eat red meat, the social worker's task is to do whatever he or she could to try to prevent it (in ethical manner of course).

You see, I think both my friend and I were somehow true in our arguments. My friend was arguing on the basis of avoiding judgment getting in the way of intervention, because when the social worker tries to prevent the client from eating red meat, that might be just purely the social worker's own belief about what is right and what is wrong. While I was arguing on the ground that advocates on his social functioning. That eating red meat might hinder him from being healthy, which might affect the dynamics of his family, his work and whatever else effect health issue had on the client's life.

What I can observe is that, Social Work has values that can be so extreme (which is caused by the social workers themselves). These values, at one point, can be contradictory to each other. In one hand, we are asked not to be judgmental and not to exercise our own belief and judgment about what is right and what is wrong in the interventions we are developing for our clients. On the other, we are asked to ensure that our intervention is solely on the purpose of attending to the client's need and ensure that the client's social functioning is enhanced, or restored.

So, the question here, are we trying so hard not to be judgmental? Are we trying so hard not to let the personal value comes in until we're completely detached from the practice itself? For me, personal value can be useful in certain degree.

1) When a social worker has personal values, it means the social workers has experienced moral development that can help him or her see the right and wrong thing in general. Of course, by doing this, the social worker needs to be scientific and backs up the argument with scientific support. The social worker must have the knowledge about what red meat might do to a person with a high blood pressure. So, his personal value is that red meat is bad for the client. So, consulting a doctor, the social worker develops an intervention that has something to do with a healthier diet. Then, one of the responsibilities of the social worker is that to prevent the client from further harming himself with the red meat diet.

2) Personal values are somewhat the end result of professionalism. Without the ability to store a moral memory, then how do the social workers understand the importance of professionalism in the first place? Personal values can be beneficial in practice, because for me, if you really want to help your client, you must have compassion, and compassion is a personal value. Therefore, what I can conclude here is that what the literature has said about how personal values can hinder from professional practice is the ones that involve biasness in decision making like when you have revenge on the client, or even when, for me, you are indifferent with the client. So, let's ask ourselves, if you have to be indifferent with your clients, how do you actually help them? So, at the end of the day, you still need to be compassionate and passionate with what you're doing right? Isn't that a personal value?

So, for me, an extreme form of everything is bad. So, extremely being non-judgmental, and extremely relying on your personal value can be bad equally. If you really want to be in a helping profession, then make sure you check that your moral compass is in a healthy level. And of course, all this is based on my personal thoughts.