As Social Workers we are trained not to receive gifts from our clients. In many agencies this is considered unethical practice, especially when we have involuntary clients. This is to protect clients from being taken advantage of by their workers.
Some agencies have differing opinions about what is considered a gift. Homemade gifts such as baked goods or a card which cost very little money are accepted as to avoid offending the client. Sometimes clients just want to genuinely thank their Social Workers and they want to give more than a verbal "thanks."
The reverse happened to me today. I wanted to give my clients Christmas cards as a sign of good will, however a co-worker told me immediately that it is not allowed at our agency. Now, my role is definitely not front line child intervention anymore and my clients have great boundaries so I believe they would generally be surprised and delighted with a Christmas card (and not read too much into it). I don't consider a Christmas card a gift, but I suppose there must be a rule about giving anything to clients in the big agency I work for. And to be honest I was going to make sure that none of the cards had the word Christmas in them anyways, since I am not particularly religious.
Sigh. I am always looking for inventive ways to develop my professional relationship with my clients, but I suppose this time I have just become a victim to the opposite motion of bribery in the workplace!
No comments:
Post a Comment