The advent of computerized data systems, the growth of managed care, the AIDS epidemic, mandatory reporting requirements for child abuse, workplace drug testing, and various laws requiring that social workers maintain confidential communications in some situations yet disclose them in others have made confidentiality a vital, changing area of the law. Practitioners, administrators, and those studying for these professions need to know how to use these laws to protect their clients, themselves, and their agencies. Mental health practitioners need authoritative guidance in these areas when working with clients -- children as well as adults -- in both individual and group settings. Administrators must be aware of the laws that protect worker and client privacy, and those that permit legitimate access to information.

Handling personal and often sensitive information is central to daily practice in social and health services. However, the increasing emphasis on multi-disciplinary and inter-agency working required for effective, joined-up services presents new challenges and dilemmas in preserving citizens' rights to privacy. This book examines key philosophical, ethical and legal issues in the area of privacy and confidentiality and explores their implications for policy and practice. ,Offering a range of analytical frameworks the book focuses on different practice areas, including health and social care, children's services and criminal justice. The contributors from disciplines including law, philosophy, anthropology and the personal service professions bring their direct personal experience of working to create new systems and practices in a turbulent policy environment. The book provides a synoptic multi-disciplinary view of this increasingly challenging area where technological development, civil liberties, surveillance, health and welfare become inexorably intertwined. The book will be of key interest to professionals, managers, policy makers and academics in the health and personal social services. Students of social work, probation, medicine, nursing and professions allied to medicine will find a common multidisciplinary framework for their respective professional concerns to protect the interests and promote the wellbeing of clients, their families and the wider community.

"This book explores how the social work profession should be characterized by a reflective equilibrium based theory, the professional experiences being triggered by the values that give the nature of this profession. It explores the importance of ethics and values- based practice in social work"--

From Simon & Schuster, Confidentiality in Social Work is Suanna J. Wilson's exploration of the issues and principles of social work. As described by Social Thought, Confidentiality in Social Work "clearly demonstrates that all of us—practitioners, supervisors, administrators, researchers, and academicians—have neglected the issue of confidentiality, and that we must now take prompt, careful action."

This new practice text provides a series of readings focusing on case management in a number of fields and in a variety of settings with different client populations. Each chapter examines a major component of case management practice by presenting information about an innovative program from a different location around the country. In conjunction, these readings provide a road map to social work case management.In addition to offering up-to-date practice approaches and examining the functions and skills of case management in depth, the authors provide the policy information needed for putting this traditional form of social work practice into today's service delivery context.

Policy makers need information about the nation—ranging from trends in the overall economy down to the use by individuals of Medicare—in order to evaluate existing programs and to develop new ones. This information often comes from research based on data about individual people, households, and businesses and other organizations, collected by statistical agencies. The benefit of increasing data accessibility to researchers and analysts is better informed public policy. To realize this benefit, a variety of modes for data access— including restricted access to confidential data and unrestricted access to appropriately altered public-use data—must be used. The risk of expanded access to potentially sensitive data is the increased probability of breaching the confidentiality of the data and, in turn, eroding public confidence in the data collection enterprise. Indeed, the statistical system of the United States ultimately depends on the willingness of the public to provide the information on which research data are based. Expanding Access to Research Data issues guidance on how to more fully exploit these tradeoffs. The panel’s recommendations focus on needs highlighted by legal, social, and technological changes that have occurred during the last decade.