ETHICS AND STANDARDS OF SOCIAL WORK IN PROJECTS OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: PROBLEM STATEMENT

Abstract

The article emphasizes that the implementation of ethics, standards, and professional principles of social work based on the experience of international organizations actualizes a wide range of issues for, first of all, qualitative improvement of the social work policy in Ukraine. The author emphasizes that such a process cannot be taken as a literal transfer of such experience to Ukrainian practice (using ready-made models, scripts, etc.) since, in addition to cultural, social, and other identities, our country is experiencing a hybrid russian-Ukrainian war. The latter is the pivotal actor of influence on the outlined poly system; accordingly, we are talking about a comprehensive, high-quality, and careful adaptation of international experience to the local sociocultural, normative, and professional context. It is emphasized that the international experience of ethical models based on human rights (client-centeredness, autonomy, etc.) significantly expands the usual ones for our social work practice and theory. The latter is based on a normative and bureaucratic approach (structured results, quantitative indicators), which leads to the potential leveling of certain ethical norms of such activities. Instead, the basis of the social work policy system in Ukraine is a set of cultural, institutional, and resource constraints that are decisive for such activities. Accordingly, they also affect adherence to ethical principles in the practice of relevant work in our country. Such limitations require a comprehensive, sensitive, and thoughtful approach and cannot be resolved here and now. It is emphasized that supervision and its types (inter-supervision, ethical and other reflections) form the basis of an innovative approach to modern social work in our country. Their actualization will not only strengthen, emphasize, and allow the use of domestic positive experiences in such activities. Still, it will also become the basis for the sensitive implementation of its (social work) international standards, which, in turn, will not only improve the quality of services to the population but also form a new ethical culture in the industry. An integral part of this process is eliminating the conflict between administrative requirements and the profession's ethics, which demonstrates the need for profound structural changes in the system of social work organizations in Ukraine. The parallel institutionalization of ethical standards should accompany this process: in particular, through the development of the aforementioned code of ethics (and related documents) at least at the local (organization, department, etc.) level, updating educational programs for training young professionals, and integrating ethical criteria into the system of service quality assessment.