An Analysis of Ethical Dilemmas and Countermeasures in the Process of Gerontological Social Work Services—Taking Community M in Wuhan City as an Example

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_58How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Elderly Care Social Work; Ethical Dilemmas; Social Work Practice

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the continuous increase in aging, the development of gerontological social work is in full swing. However, in the practical process of gerontological social work, it is inevitable to face a series of ethical dilemmas, which have a series of impacts on the implementation and operation of projects. Whether the ethical issues in the practical operation process of the project can be properly solved directly affects the degree of acceptance of social work services by the elderly group, and is also related to the healthy development of the entire industry.Based on this, taking a series of events encountered in the practical work of gerontological social work in Community M of Wuhan City as examples, this article explores the possible ethical dilemmas in the service process of gerontological social work: ethical dilemmas faced by social workers themselves under different subjects, ethical dilemmas arising from the conflict between the professional value of “helping others to help themselves” and the ideology of “professional parenthood”, and ethical dilemmas under multiple relationships brought about by transference and countertransference. At the same time, this article briefly analyzes the countermeasures for dealing with ethical dilemmas encountered in the service process of gerontological social work, and puts forward four types of countermeasures, namely, always adhering to the principle of protecting life, establishing a social support system for clients, strengthening the capacity building of social workers themselves, giving play to the role of social work supervision, and applying for referral services from professional institutions when necessary. It is hoped that this can provide ideas and suggestions for the development of gerontological social work in China.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Siyuan Zhang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/10
TI  - An Analysis of Ethical Dilemmas and Countermeasures in the Process of Gerontological Social Work Services—Taking Community M in Wuhan City as an Example
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 11th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research（ICHSSR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 495
EP  - 502
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_58
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-440-2_58
ID  - Zhang2025
ER  -