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BJSW Advance Access originally published online on September 26, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2005 35(8):1249-1264; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch242
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.

Social Work and Narrative Ethics

Tom Wilks

Tom Wilks is a Lecturer in Social Work at London South Bank University. He has worked for many years as a social worker in the field of mental health. His research interests are in social work ethics.

Correspondence to Tom Wilks, Department of Primary and Social Care, Faculty of Health and Social Care, London South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, London SE1 0AA. E-mail: wilkstm{at}lsbu.ac.uk

Most accounts of social work values contain two central conceptual strands: social work ethics and anti-discriminatory practice. Within social work, relatively little attention has been paid to the potential of feminist approaches to ethics, grounded in identity to bring these two strands together. Narrative ethics is an approach which, like the feminist ethic of care, takes identity as its starting point and therefore has the potential to bridge these two distinctive approaches to social work values. However, in asserting the centrality of narrative in the construction of our identities, it moves beyond the feminist approach. Narrative approaches to ethics have been widely adopted in medicine. This paper explores their applicability to social work practice, particularly in the light of an increasing interest in narrative as a basis for practice intervention.

Keywords: ethics, narrative, values


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