Professional ethics and autonomy in community work secondary settings in Hong Kong

Abstract

Community work in Hong Kong is a part of social work and social welfare services. Since the early 2000s, ‘community work secondary settings’ (CWSS) have appeared, and a professional autonomy issue has emerged. This grounded theory study aims to fill the knowledge gap by investigating this ethical issue and generating a context-specific theory that reflects how social workers in CWSS understand and exercise their professional autonomy. In this research, theoretical sampling was conducted, and its flow was influenced by a phenomenon that practitioners were worried about when using the community work approach. Two core categories, ‘workers’ being ambivalent in performing professional identity’ and ‘taking hidden actions in practice’, were generated. These categories were analysed separately using Glaser’s Six C’s theoretical coding family and then integrated into a context-specific theory. It was found that professional autonomy issues notably manifested in two situations: 1) when workers selected their intervention methods to address clients’ needs and problems, and 2) when there was a conflict of interest between funding bodies and clients. These situations were moments when workers engaged with professional ethics while facing professional identity crises. To eliminate the perplexity, workers’ commitment to community work and their use of reflexivity matter. The complicated connection between values and professional activities was theorised as a social process of the legitimacy of social regulations underpinning workers’ actions in their meaningful sphere. This subtle and relational process linked professional autonomy, professional identity and ethical decision-making. This research sheds light on workers’ resistance in a ‘darker side of practice’, illustrating when and how workers used phronesis during ethical decision-making. It also demonstrated the interplay between ‘micro-ethics’ and ‘macro-ethics’ in the studied community work secondary settings.