The aim of the unit is to enable students to confront real-life ethical dilemmas, and decide on appropriate courses of action using a systematic and structured approach. There are a number of reasons why social workers, welfare workers and humanitarian workers need to make ethically considered decisions in their practice. Often these decisions involve choosing one course of action that is not ethically ideal over another that is not ethically ideal. When a decision must be made about two or more courses of action that do not fit `perfectly' with the values and ethics of social work, we refer to this as an `ethical dilemma'.
