Code of Ethics and Ethical Situations

The reflection journal is designed to offer you an opportunity to reflect on your training experiences. The reflection journal is 3-page long and should include professional reflection (2-page long) and personal reflection (1-page long). For professional reflection, you need to provide a brief description of values, skills, and knowledge, and perspectives from the trainings and write about your experience, thoughts and feelings related to any of the following topics that are covered :

• NASW code of ethics and ethical situation(s) and decision-making steps you took
• Diversity and cultural competency including School of Social Work transcultural perspective
• Different roles and functions of social worker and social service agencies
• Engagement with clients: Using interview skills
• Other professional issues (e.g., self-care, addressing self-disclosure and other boundary issues, working under supervisor, confidentiality, etc.)

For personal reflection, you include how the training experiences have affected your attitudes about certain populations and/or self-awareness regarding personal knowledge limitations and biases.

Additional information from class discussions on the journals: The reflection journal is not a summary of the training. As social workers we use ourselves as the tool in our work. In the art of social work it is important that we know and understand ourselves (thoughts, attitudes, experiences, limitations, biases) in order to be effective and do no harm. A reflective journal is one tool to help social workers become more effective in our practice.