Riding Out The Pandemic: Riding Out the Pandemic: Professional Virtues in the Digital World: Slow Ethics for Social Work during COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has accelerated trends towards digital communication in human services. This talk discusses the ethical challenges for social workers, for whom human relationships lie at the heart of their work.  It draws on data from an international survey in May 2020 and an ongoing survey of UK social workers during 2020-21 to examine lessons from digital working during COVID-19 from a virtue ethical perspective. Sarah advocates for ‘slow ethics’ in times of fast-moving crisis, and the virtues of courage, compassion and professional wisdom exemplified through the ‘ethics work’  of practitioners struggling to practise ethically in new and difficult circumstances.

Biography

Sarah Banks is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director, Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, Durham University, UK.  She teaches and researches in professional ethics, community development and community-based participatory research. She is joint coordinator of the Social Work Ethics Research Group of the European Social Work Research Association and is on the Board of Ethics and Social Welfare Journal (of which she was a founding co-editor). Her popular textbook, Ethics and Values in Social Work (Red Globe Press), published the 5th edition in 2021.