Negotiating personal engagement and professional accountability: professional wisdom and ethics work

Banks, S.

doi:10.1080/13691457.2012.732931

Negotiating personal engagement and professional accountability: professional wisdom and ethics work

Banks, S.

Authors

Professor Sarah Banks s.j.banks@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between personal engagement and professional accountability in social work—considering whether the increasing focus on professional accountability in the context of the new public management, public austerity and market-based systems of welfare is incompatible with the personal engagement of social workers with service users and with their work. After undertaking a conceptual analysis of the terms, it is argued that both personal engagement and professional accountability are essential features of social work. Indeed, it is this negotiation of the creative tension between them that constitutes the subject matter and work of professional ethics. This requires a capacity and disposition for good judgement based in professional wisdom and a process of practical reasoning or ‘ethics work’ to find the right balance between closeness and distance, passion and rationality, empathic relationships and measurable social outcomes. It also requires a space for the exercise of professional wisdom.

Citation

Banks, S. (2013). Negotiating personal engagement and professional accountability: professional wisdom and ethics work. European Journal of Social Work, 16(5), 587-604. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2012.732931

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Nov 1, 2013
Deposit Date	Nov 6, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Nov 19, 2014
Journal	European Journal of Social Work
Print ISSN	1369-1457
Electronic ISSN	1468-2664
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	16
Issue	5
Pages	587-604
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2012.732931
Keywords	Personal engagement, Professional accountability, Professional ethics, Professional wisdom, Ethics work.

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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in European Journal of Social Work on 25/10/2012, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13691457.2012.732931.