Personal Ethical Dilemmas

1171 Words3 Pages

1. What are the most difficult ethical dilemmas you face? I work as a Child Protective Service Supervisor so I have faced many difficult ethical dilemmas. The one that keeps me up at night is the removal of teenagers from their homes. When children become teenagers, they have built peer relationships that are nearly as important has their biological ties to their families. I speak to this from personal experience as my best friend was removed from her home in our 11th grade year and I didn’t see her again until I was past 30 years old. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand if the safety of a child outweighs their need for those strong community and peer relationships. We recently had two teen boys who were living with friends, there …show more content…

One of the teens was under a truancy petition and when it was reported to him that the boys were living with friends, he ordered they be placed in care immediately. To me, this was an ethical dilemma. Knowing that it is so very difficult to find foster homes for teens, especially in their own communities, I knew this would end in them being placed in a facility. Legally, however, I was bound by the court to remove these children from all the people they had relationships with. This was heartbreakingly hard to do; however, legally I bound to remove and did so. Ethically, I feel the Judge should have allowed us to work within our community to keep these two boys with the people who they were connected to. The boys, by the way, are in a facility. To me, the most difficult ethical decisions I make on a daily basis are the ones that make a change in a person’s life. The other difficult ethical decisions I make usually deal with low functioning families who are unknowingly putting their children at risk. In almost every case, you can see the parental love for the child and that the customers are not …show more content…

While relatives always receive preference in placement choice, it is sometimes concerning that we are placing children in homes that are as inappropriate as the homes they were removed from. The State may complete an abbreviated home study on these families which the family may pass; however, we usually know many things about the family that are either to their credit or not to their credit. It is very hard to fight for best interest of a child in the face of an approved home study and there must be a lot of solid evidence produced to show that while the structure of the home has been approved and they have no criminal/cps background, this family is not in the best interest of a child. This issue can and has ended in several extended court hearings that makes it hard to obtain permanency for the

Open Document