WORKING FOR CHILDREN

When is professional behavior ethical and when is it negligent, irresponsible, or immoral? This question has recently become the focus of vigorous debate, particularly in relation to professional behavior affecting a relatively helpless segment of our society-children. This new book goes beyond the more straightforward aspects of ethical guidelines and children's rights to examine how individual professionals can, should. and actually do resolve moral dilemmas in their day-to-day work with children.

Eighteen specialists-representing psychology, pediatrics, family medicine, education, social work, and child advocacy-explore the ways in which standard professional guidelines and practices result in practitioners defaulting on unique opportunities to significantly affect the direction of children's lives. The authors point out when rigid institutional procedures are barriers to securing professional services for children and when those procedures are merely convenient rationalizations for in-action. And they consider the conditions under which individual professionals are justified, and indeed morally obligated, to make exceptions to established rules and procedures.

Chapters One through Four investigate the philosophical underpinnings of the helping professions. Chapters Five through Nine show how routine modes of professional functioning frequently give rise to ethical quandaries. Chapters Ten through Fourteen analyze the limitations and difficulties caused by the external environments surrounding professional work with children. Chapter Fifteen summarizes the recommendations given by each chapter's authors for dealing with observed ethical dilemmas. Case examples are included throughout the book, and ten of the chapters end with case study dilemmas that can be used as exercises in problem solving.