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A social worker does his work based on value and acts only on whatever is valuable to him (Zhang, Shun long,1982). However, a social worker inevitably has his personal preference in value, which may affect his choice of the way he provides service and hence compromise his professional practice. Accordingly one must carefully distinguish and clarify how his decisions are affected by his personal value. A social worker should constantly examine how his personal value interferes. In this research, the researcher hopes to achieve the following goals. First, explore and determine the correlation between a social worker’s personal value, and his professional judgment and decisions, as well as how his personal value and professional judgment affect his decisions. The research findings can serve as reference for the field of practice. For example, a supervisor can better oversee his social workers to avoid personal value affecting their practice and conduct appropriate trainings to improve their capacity. Second, the findings of this research can also be adopted by the academia as introductory education for value of social work and a topic of value for further exploration.
The research subjects were sampled from the social workers who conduct nationwide custody investigations. The survey was done by a self-designed questionnaire. One hundred and fifty-nine (159) questionnaires were sent out, of which 138 were returned, with a response rate of 86.79 percent. Of the 138 questionnaires completed, 9 are invalid, and 129 are valid samples.
Key findings and conclusions are derived from data analyses as follows: 1. Social workers who conduct custody investigations have their personal preference in value of Child Rights Preservation. Social workers’ view of how child rights should be preserved vary significantly by their gender, marital status, level of education, years of service in social work, and tenure of the current office. However, social workers’ personal background, such as age, years of service in social work, and tenure of the current office, cross-function with other factors, such as marital status and qualification (whether or not they are certified social workers) on their view of child rights protection.
2. Custody-investigation social workers have different focuses in their professional interventions. Personal background variables, such as gender, age, marital status, and with or without children, as well as professional background variables, such as public or private sector, position, and with or without on-job training, significantly affect social workers’ judgment in professional interventions. However, social workers’ years of service in social work and tenure of office in custody investigations only cross-function with variables such as level of education and qualification (certified social workers or not). 3. Custody-investigation social workers make their judgment of custody mainly based on parents’ ability of raising a child. Their first priority of custody recommendation is single custody, followed by leaving it for court judgment. Social workers’ personal background has no significant influence on their decisions of custody recommendation. However, their professional background variables, such as geographic location of his organization, qualification (certified social worker or not), and his major of study, have significant influence on their decisions of custody arrangement. 4. Social workers’ value of child rights preservation and his judgment of professional interventions are negatively correlated. Their view of child rights preservation is strongly correlated with their decisions of custody arrangement . On the other hand, there is no correlation between social workers’ judgment of professional interventions and decisions of custody arrangement . Moreover, how custody-investigation social workers view child rights preservation and several variables in judgment of professional interventions have influence on their decisions of custody arrangement. Based on the above findings and conclusions, the researcher would like to make the following recommendations: 1. For the academia – the issues of value and value of social work should be included in the curricula of social work departments and graduate studies. 2. For the field of practice – case study and training on professional value should be conducted. 3. For further research – as this research only explores the aspects of personal value, the future researchers who are interested in this particular area can include environmental and cultural factors in their research, or investigate how social workers’ judgment of value is affected at macro levels.
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