The Elephant in the Room: Conflict between Social Work Values and Agency Policies

By Lissell Cabrera, Johanna Flores, Dorian Guerrero, and Jonathan Suh

Social work is a profession that is rooted in passion, dedication and commitment to the well-being of people. Arguably, the goal of social work is to provide services to support and empower consumers to live up to their full potential.

Yet, every social worker must adjust their personal values to uphold agency policy practices that are seemingly focused on particular agency agendas, rather than the needs of the people they service. It appears that many agency policies are designed to protect against liability issues. As a result, social workers may feel conflicted between prioritizing agency policies or supporting the consumer.

Due to agency policy restrictions, social workers are often unable to perform their responsibilities following the basic principles of the profession. Consumers then begin to form a negative opinion of social workers as individuals who do not perform their intended duty, which is to help. Instead, consumers view social workers as “supporters” who are unable to effectively help. Agency policies hinder social work practices and undermine a social worker’s credibility creating challenges for consumers to trust or connect with social workers. This leads social workers to feel inadequate, incapable and unfulfilled, which can in turn lead to high burnout and turnover rates.

Understandably, social workers remain hesitant to discuss these issues directly with agency management due to uncertain consequences. The conflict between social work values and agency policies will continue to be a glaring dilemma that cannot be explicitly mentioned, hence “the elephant in the room.”