(LO7-Recognise and consider the ethics implications of choices and actions.)
Working with people who need special care is always associated with different ethical issues. This is because biologically speaking, they are special people, but socially, ethically or politically speaking, they are normal people just as anyone else. This results in a complicated method when working with them—care, understanding, and respect. The first thing that is associated with this is that we need to be really careful about how we call them. When we are referring to them we shouldn’t use ‘clients’, which may hurt their feelings and confidence; instead, ‘members’ is a much better word choice in order to remember them. Beyond that, the way we are chatting with them also has great significance. Even though some of them has disabilities to understand and respond to our chat properly, I still tried my best to pretend that they responded correctly and nodded with a big smile on my face to show my respect and interest to their responses. In this way, I managed to both entertain them and offer respect to them. Last but not least, when we are taking photos of them to keep a report, we always ask them whether they allow photos or not, and we do not take any photos if they would not like us to. This helps maintain their privacy and freedom of decision.
In conclusion, we gain so much experience in dealing with making decisions associated with ethics. From this service, we’ve learned that our minor choices and actions can have a great influence on other people’s feeling, especially those who need extra care from us.
Photo: The photo list that reflects our respect for their privacy.
