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Seminars

For presenter fees and availability call 919-302-6813 or email stromgot@verizon.net. Customized versions of seminars are also available.

Advanced Ethical Issues
Creating Ethical Organizations
Dialogue on Dilemmas
Ethical Action in Challenging Times
Ethical Boundaries: Avoiding the Slippery Slope
Ethics in Administration
Ethical Practice in Supervision
Ethics and Domestic Violence
The Ethics of Professional Practice in Rural Settings
Managing Risk through Ethical Practice
Moral Courage
MySpace or YourSpace?: Professional Ethics and Social Networks
Out of the Office: Ethical Practice in Natural Settings
The Ethics of Attraction
The Ethics of Practice with Minors
Ethics in Field Education

Advanced Ethical Issues

Social workers, psychologists, nurses and other helping professionals are not immune to ethical challenges as they strive to address difficult situations with scarce resources and increased pressures for productivity and efficiency. Often the dilemmas these professionals face are not simply a choice between right and wrong, but between two imperfect choices.

This program is intended to build upon earlier ethics training and assist participants in examining difficult ethical dilemmas. After a review of core ethical principles and a decision making framework, participants will discuss complex ethical dilemmas provided by the instructor as well as those generated by the group, to determine options for addressing vexing ethics challenges. In particular, participants will:

Review the major standards for ethical practice in the helping professions
Learn a model for examining ethical dilemmas
Apply the standards and model to at least two cases drawn from different fields of practice and different levels of intervention
Identify resources for lifelong learning

Seminar length:

2-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Creating Ethical Organizations

The daily news is filled with stories of organizations turned upside down by scandals of one sort or another. What lessons must be learned, after the headlines fade, to assure that other corporations, agencies, and departments avoid a similar fate? Is it simply a matter of tossing out a few bad apples or selecting a leader with integrity? If so, why are some organizations prone to ethical lapses despite repeated changes in management, finances, social conditions, or quality assurance efforts?

This workshop examines the signs and symptoms of ethically-troubled organizations and offers strategies for creating principled organizations and preventing or recovering from ethical misconduct.

Participants in this seminar learn:

Symptoms of collective ethical lapses
"Paths to scandal"
How to assess an organization’s ethical culture
Policy, process, and personnel strategies for enhancing organizational ethics
How to apply course concepts to case examples

Seminar length:

2-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Dialogue on Dilemmas

Though ethical dilemmas are a common and often vexing aspect of professional practice, few opportunities exist to safely and thoughtfully explore them. This seminar creates such a space. The seminar begins with a review of the sources of dilemmas and systems for categorizing and resolving them. The remainder of the session is devoted to facilitated discussion about group- or instructor-generated dilemmas.

Participants in this seminar learn:

Five sources of dilemmas
Nine core ethical standards
The ABCDE model for ethical decision making
Kidder's paradigm for classifying dilemmas
Creative strategies for solving particular dilemmas
Seven resources for continued ethical development

Seminar length:

2-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Ethical Action in Challenging Times

From baseball fields to board rooms, the news is filled with examples of lapses in ethical conduct. Many of today's scandals were years in the making. How did they get this far without anyone standing up to say, "This is wrong."? Could well-intentioned people, acting with moral courage, have affected the course of events before they got out of hand?

This program is intended to assist participants in becoming change agents in behalf of ethical principles. Participants will learn about moral courage and exemplars in ethical action drawn from a variety of fields. After a review of concepts and opportunities for ethical action, participants will discuss complex case dilemmas to determine options for addressing vexing ethics challenges and how to employ tools for effective "ethical activism".

Participants will:

learn about moral courage, role models for moral courage, and the barriers to acting ethically.
learn eight tools that can assist change agents in standing up for ethical principles.
learn, through discussion, options for ethical decisions in an array of cases and how the eight tools might assist in enacting those decisions.
know about resources for further information on ethics.

Seminar length:

2-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Ethical Boundaries: Avoiding the Slippery Slope

Codes of ethics in the health and helping professions all address the avoidance of conflicts of interest and in particular the potential for damage from dual relationships. In this seminar, participants will explore the array of boundary issues that are common to professional practice and the conflicts of interest that can result. Through discussion, participants will utilize decision-making strategies to learn how to avoid such dilemmas, and how to set clear, appropriate and culturally sensitive boundaries when such conflicts are unavoidable.

At the conclusion of this session, participants will:

Be able to identify conflicts of interest and understand dual relationships and sexual impropriety as particular forms of conflicts of interest
Distinguish between avoidable dual relationships and those that are not
Understand the variables to weigh in responding appropriately to unavoidable dual relationships
Apply the knowledge and skills for boundary setting to case examples
Be familiar with the resources for learning more about dilemmas in this domain of practice

Seminar length:

1-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Ethical Practice in Supervision

Corporate wrongdoing, plagiarism cases and other scandals are but a few recent examples of lapses in ethical conduct in modern-day America . Helping professionals are not immune to ethical challenges as they strive to address difficult situations with scarce resources and increased pressures for efficiency. Supervisory personnel bear additional responsibility in helping to guide appropriate conduct in their supervisees.

This workshop reviews key ethical principles for effective supervision and the resources and strategies to successfully implement them. Participants will apply key principles to case vignettes drawn from supervisory practice. In attending the seminar participants will:

Be familiar with the major tenets on supervision in the ethical codes of the APA, ACA and NASW
Learn recent findings about ethics complaints as they relate to supervisory activities.
Practice strategies for weighing and resolving ethical dilemmas in supervision
Identify resources for continued learning

Seminar length:

1-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Ethics and Domestic Violence

Staff and volunteers in the field of partner violence face multiple risks and challenges in upholding their ethical obligations while responding to the needs of their clients in a volatile service environment. This seminar examines some of those ethical and clinical tensions and introduces strategies to address them.

In this session participants will:

Recognize the ethical and clinical tensions in services in the field of interpersonal violence
Will be familiar with four key concepts in ethics: confidentiality, conflicts of interest, boundaries and self-determination
Learn an ethical decision making strategy
Apply the model to cases related to the four key concepts
Engage in problem-solving around commonly occurring ethical dilemmas in this field
Identify resources for continued learning

Seminar length:

1-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

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The Ethics of Professional Practice in Rural Settings

Close, overlapping, and interdependent relationships are all hallmarks of rural areas. The social structures of these communities are flexible and not highly differentiated, resulting in intersecting social and professional interactions that can test long-held ethical and clinical concepts, such as confidentiality, objectivity, competence, and client-practitioner boundaries.

This workshop examines the features of rural social work practice as they relate to these ethical concepts, and provides guidelines for appropriately addressing challenging situations.

Participants in this seminar learn:

Five unique features of practice in rural areas
Four concepts on ethical practice
How to employ the concept of "thick and thin" boundaries
How to apply critical thinking to at least four commonly occurring ethical dilemmas experienced in rural practice

Seminar length:

2-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Managing Risk through Ethical Practice

Ethical practice has received increased attention in the past decade as a result of concerns about managing malpractice risk, assuring quality service delivery and demonstrating professional competence to the satisfaction of clients, stakeholders and regulatory agencies. Paralleling this sensitivity is the concern that ethical vulnerability has also skyrocketed - cases are increasingly complex and multidimensional, the "stakes" of bad decisions are high, and the available resources to address client needs are shrinking while pressures for efficiency are rising.

This workshop will review some of these ethical pressures and the strategies to effectively deal with them. At the conclusion of the day you will:

Be familiar with the profession's code of ethics and nine ethical standards that transcend helping professions
Be able to apply ethical decision making to case examples from across the practice spectrum
Understand how research on ethics complaints, violations and malpractice claims can help improve your practice,
Be familiar with resources to enhance ethical decision making, and
Be able to identify red flags associated with ethically risky practice

Seminar length:

2-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion. The session is customizable for various disciplines.

Moral Courage

From baseball fields to board rooms, the daily news is filled with examples of lapses in ethical conduct. Many of today's scandals were years in the making. How did they get this far without anyone standing up to say, "This is wrong."? Could well-intentioned people, acting with moral courage, have affected the course of events before they got out of hand?

In all walks of life, ethical challenges arise not in knowing the right thing to do, but in doing the right thing under adverse circumstances in a corrupt organizational climate or amid a risk to one's livelihood. Yet without the courage to stand for those standards we value, what meaning do the standards have?

In this session, we'll discuss the pressures not "to do the right thing", and the skills and resources we all can draw on to act with moral courage. Participants will:

Understand definitions and examples of moral courage
Identify situations that call for moral courage
Understand the barriers to acting on ethics
Develop strength and confidence in ethical action
Discover resources for continued learning

Seminar length:

1-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

MySpace or YourSpace?: Professional Ethics and Social Networks

The widespread emergence of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook create unique challenges in the application of familiar ethical concepts. Client privacy, professional boundaries, worker self-disclosure, conflicts of interest and informed consent all take on new form and complexity in light of technological advances.

This workshop introduces the features of social networking and explores the risks and rewards of conscious use of networking sites in social work practice.

Participants in this seminar learn:

Features, controls, uses and misuses of Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and Friendster
The ways in which social networking may be used to advance professional, organizational, and therapeutic goals
The imbedded hazards in access to clients' sites, workers' sites, and in linkages between the two
Illustrative case examples

Seminar length:

2-4 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Out of the Office: Ethical Practice in Natural Settings

Practitioners in many health and helping professions deliver their services outside the office environment. While natural settings such as clients' homes and communities offer great therapeutic advantages, they may also give rise to complex or unanticipated ethical challenges.

In this session, participants will learn about the unique features of natural settings, be come familiar with a user-friendly model for ethical decision making and apply it to dilemmas arising in a variety of non-office environments. At the conclusion of this session, participants will:

Learn the ABCDE model for making ethical decisions
Identify ethical dilemmas that are unique to practice in natural settings
Demonstrate ethical decision making using the ABCDE model of ethical decision making
Identify resources for continued learning

Seminar length:

1-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

The Ethics of Attraction

While the health and helping professions have clear prohibitions on sexual involvement with clients, there is less guidance about the phenomena that can lead to such transgressions. How can clinicians assure that the warmth, trust and positive regard that are hallmarks of the helping relationship do not become distorted and destructive and that nascent feelings of attraction are not ignored or mishandled?

In this session, we will explore the attraction spectrum and the indications that arise when affinity for a client has ceased to be constrictive. Through the presentation and discussions of cases, participants will learn:

Strategies for ethically responding to and addressing affection in an ethical manner
The clinical signs of client attraction
The red flags that precede sexual impropriety
The skills and strategies educators, clinicians and supervisors can use to effectively address attraction to clients
To apply the knowledge and skills for risk assessment and management to case examples
The resources for learning more about dilemmas in this domain of practice

Seminar length:

1-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

The Ethics of Practice with Minors

Social workers and other professionals in child-serving settings strive to meet serious human needs in an often fragmented and frustrating social service environment. Every day, in schools, hospitals, child protective, residential and other settings, a delicate balancing act takes place between the constraints of policies and resources and the needs of clients. In addition to providing services that are clinically sound and responsive to their clients', workers must also be attuned to the ethical dimensions their cases present. How can they uphold principles such as confidentiality, informed consent and self-determination with a clientele whose rights and choices are constrained by age, maturity, and legal and parental prerogatives?

This workshop addresses the strategies helping professionals can use to bridge those tensions, to deliver effective, ethical services. Participants will learn about ethical decision making, explore the practice norms associated with various child-serving settings, and apply ethical, legal, and practice standards to work with minors. In particular, participants will:

Understand the ABCDE Model for making ethical decisions
Understand how to distinguish legal responsibilities to minors from ethical and clinical responsibilities
Appreciate the ways that agency norms and minors' developmental stages affect the application of ethical concepts
Practice ethical decision making using the ABCDE Model of Ethical Decision Making
Identify resources for continued learning

Seminar length:
1-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Ethics in Administration

Whether in the public, corporate or nonprofit sector, individuals in administrative and leadership positions face unique challenges as they strive to balance competing demands, values, and constituencies. With such responsibilities also come great powers. It is easy to identify leaders who have used their positions to improve communities and create healthy and effective workplaces. Unfortunately, it is perhaps easier to identify administrators whose decisions were personally ruinous as well as destructive to employees and customers.

This session will examine the competing values that create ethical dilemmas in leadership, describe a process for resolving dilemmas and discuss the resources administrators can draw on for inspiration and action in difficult situations. Participants will have the opportunity to apply these insights to ethical dilemmas drawn from various administrative roles and settings.

At the conclusion of the session participants will:

Understand ethical dilemmas arising from competing interests
Possess a framework for classifying dilemmas
Understand a six-step strategy for resolving ethical dilemmas
Understand the principles of moral courage and the barriers to acting with courage
Be able to apply these concepts to at least one dilemma arising in leadership or administrative positions
Be knowledgeable about inspirational and educational resources for ethical action by administrators.

Seminar length:
2-6 hours. Longer sessions allow for greater depth and discussion.

Ethics in Field Education

Field instructors play multiple, significant roles in the preparation of the next generation of social work professionals. They are teachers, mentors, evaluators, supervisors, and also learners, as students expose them to novel problems and questions. This session is designed to help participants comfortably undertake those roles, addressing fundamentals of professional ethics, ethical decision making, and ethical action, as well as group problem solving on commonly occurring dilemmas.

At the end of the workshop, participants will be familiar with:

Five sources of dilemmas
Kidder’s paradigm for classifying dilemmas
Nine core ethical standards
The six-question model for ethical decision making
Moral courage as a foundation for ethical action
Strategies for applying these concepts to scenarios common to supervision, teaching and student placements
Resources for support and continuing education in ethics

Session length: 4-6 hours