When Can You Be Truly Self-Determined?

One of the values social workers are taught to hold strongly is self-determination. It is a principle that tells the practitioners that their clients have the right to not be forced into deciding or acting anything. Clients of social work, or any other fields, should have the freedom to choose "their own economic, social, and cultural development" (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, n.d., para. 2). Note the word "development." What does it entail then? In social work practice, the outcome of services should preferably be social functioning. Hence, the logical conclusion we can see here is that, one of the social work values is people's right to determine their own ways of developing that promote their own social functioning.


If you read one of my entries lately titled, "Sometimes, We're Trying So Hard Not to Be Judgmental" where I argued that every social worker should be able to exercise a healthy degree of "judgmental capacity" for certain service advantages. But this seems to oppose one of the dear values abovementioned, self-determination. What I can argue further is that, self-determination comes after social functioning. It means the clinets have the capacity to know what's best for them in order to decide for themselves. I'm sure you'll agree that we don't apply self-determination on children and mentally-challenged individuals right? I don't intend to compare certain clients to being childish or mentally challenged, but we're not perfect, we can't know everything. Until we're trained to be be knowledgeable on certain issues, we can't fully be sure if what we decide or act upon is the best thing we do. 


For example, a young highschool leaver is trying to decide which college is the best for him. Can you be confident in telling that this young man has the capacity to decide what is best for him without knowing a discernible amount of knowledge on colleges and universities in his place? If we're to fully practice the notion of self-determination, we'll just let this man decide and be the decision good or bad for him, we shall not judge. 


But for me, of course you, as a social worker, have to educate this young man on the issue. Not just about colleges, but as a scientific practitioner, you have to be able to see the options that are the best for him psychologically and socially. Some social work academicians would argue that after educating, then the choice if up to the client. But for me, as an advocate for the client, we do not just defend his rights if threatened by other parties, we defend his own social functioning too if threatened by "his own self." But of course before all this, we have to be scientifically and personally sure that some options are the best for the young man, and that these options are also the conclusion of his own opinions and feedback too. 


Social workers are not working for the clients, they're working with the clients. They're not the clients' slaves, but their partners. So as much as the clients' opinions are valuable and should be taken into account, the social workers' are too.