W3 Assignment 1: Ethics Case Study 1 — How to Tackle the Maderes Family Paper
This guide walks you through every required section of the assignment — from writing a professional case note to applying Barsky’s six ethical questions and navigating the tension between client self-determination and child safety. No guesswork, just a clear path through each prompt.
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You’re writing a case note on the Maderes family — an 11-year-old with behavioral challenges, parents working with a wraparound team to regain custody of four other children — then analyzing the case through an ethical lens. That means documenting what you observe, reflecting on prior workers’ bias, applying the strengths-based approach, and working through an ethical dilemma using both Barsky’s framework and the NASW Child Abuse and Neglect policy statement. 5–6 pages total, APA format, minimum three references beyond the case study itself.
The tricky part of this assignment isn’t the length — it’s that it asks you to do several different types of thinking in one paper. The case note is factual and structured. The ethical analysis is reflective and critical. The Barsky section is almost philosophical. Students who score low usually treat it all as one continuous essay and lose the clarity the rubric is looking for.
References That Don’t Count Toward the Minimum
The assignment is explicit: citing the case study itself, and citations from readings not on the required or recommended reading list, do not count toward your three-source minimum. Stick to assigned readings — Barsky (2023), Weisman & Zornado (2018), the NASW Code of Ethics, and the NASW Child Abuse and Neglect policy statement are your primary sources.
How to Write the Maderes Family Case Note
The case note is the foundation. Before you do any ethical analysis, you document what you know about the family in the structured, professional format that social workers actually use in the field. The model you’re meant to follow is the Jones Family Case Study in Chapter 3 of Weisman and Zornado (2018).
A 600–800 word case note isn’t a summary of everything in the case study. It’s a professional record. In practice, case notes are read by supervisors, courts, and other providers — not as narrative essays but as factual, organized documents that give a clear clinical picture fast.
What Your Case Note Should Cover
Identifying Information and Presenting Situation
Open with the basics: who is in the family unit, what brought the case to your attention, and the immediate presenting concerns. For the Maderes family, that means naming the 11-year-old’s behavioral challenges, the parents’ current custody situation, and the wraparound team’s involvement. Keep it factual and specific. Avoid interpretive language here.
Background and History
Summarize the family’s history with child welfare and any relevant prior services, living arrangements, and documented concerns. This sets up the “prior documentation” analysis you do later. Note how prior workers framed the family’s situation, but save your critique for the ethical analysis section.
Current Goals and Services
Document what services are currently in place, what the family is working toward, and who the key team members are. The wraparound model is collaborative — your case note should reflect that by naming the multiple stakeholders and their roles. State the parents’ expressed goals (regaining custody of the four children) alongside the team’s current focus.
Worker’s Professional Observations
Note what you observed during contact with the family — behavioral observations, tone of interactions, parent engagement, child presentation. Write in objective, strengths-aware language. You’re documenting what you saw, not rendering a verdict. Weisman & Zornado give clear guidance on keeping observation language neutral and strengths-focused.
Use Headings and Bullet Points in Your Case Note
The assignment explicitly says to use headings or bullet points as needed in the case note. This isn’t an essay — it’s a professional document. The Weisman & Zornado Jones Family model shows what this should look like structurally. Match that format.
Examining Prior Documentation: Finding Bias in the Record
This section asks you to look critically at how previous caseworkers documented the Maderes family. Did they document the family neutrally and accurately, or do the records reflect bias, deficit-based thinking, or judgment?
What gets documented becomes the family’s official story. If prior workers used language like “non-compliant” or “resistant” while ignoring systemic factors, that shapes every subsequent worker’s perspective — including yours, when you first pick up the file. This is one of the most important critical thinking skills in strengths-based practice.
The NASW Code of Ethics Standard on Documentation You Need to Cite
The rubric specifically asks for at least one NASW standard addressing client documentation. The most directly applicable is Standard 3.04 (Client Records), which requires social workers to include sufficient and timely documentation and to protect client confidentiality. The professional expectation embedded here is that records be accurate and serve the client’s interests — not just administrative purposes.
Some instructors also look for Standard 1.07 (Privacy and Confidentiality) when discussing how information was handled historically, or Standard 4.07 (Misrepresentation) if prior documentation appears to have distorted the family’s situation.
Documentation isn’t neutral. The words a caseworker chooses about a family travel through time and shape what every subsequent worker believes before they’ve met a single family member.
— Weisman & Zornado, 2018 (paraphrased from Chapter 3 framework)What “Signs of Bias” Might Look Like in the Records
Problem-Based / Deficit Language
- Labels parents as “non-compliant” without context
- Focuses exclusively on failures, not progress
- Attributes child behavior solely to parenting
- Omits family’s own goals and voice from records
- Uses diagnostic framing without strengths
Structural / Systemic Blind Spots
- No acknowledgment of poverty or housing instability
- Race, culture, or class assumptions in notes
- Missing information about what support was denied
- Prior assessments without client feedback included
- Inconsistent documentation of positive contacts
After identifying the bias, reflect on how it might influence service planning, team dynamics, or the family’s ability to trust professionals. Connect it directly to the specific records — don’t make generic claims about “bias in social work.” Tie it to this family’s documented history.
Applying the Strengths-Based Perspective: What NASW Standards Support It
You need at least two NASW Code of Ethics standards that support the strengths-based approach — and you need to explain why they’re relevant to this specific case. That second part is what the rubric’s “justification of relevance” criterion is checking for. Defining the standards isn’t enough.
Standard 1.01 — Commitment to Clients
Social workers’ primary responsibility is client well-being. A strengths lens honors this by building services around what the family has, not just what it lacks. The Maderes parents are actively engaged in the wraparound process — that engagement is a strength worth building on.
Standard 1.02 — Self-Determination
Clients have the right to make choices and pursue their own goals. The strengths perspective operationalizes this by centering parental goals (custody reunification) as the frame for service planning — directly supporting the worker’s relationship with the family.
Standard 1.05 — Cultural Competence
This standard supports recognizing the family’s cultural background, economic situation, and community context as strengths rather than deficits. Culturally competent practice and strengths-based practice overlap significantly here.
Standard 6.04 — Social and Political Action
The strengths perspective also supports advocacy — addressing structural barriers like housing and poverty that contribute to the family’s situation. This connects the individual case to broader systemic awareness the rubric rewards.
Pick two and develop them in your paper. Show how each standard shaped what the social worker did — or should do — in relation to the Maderes family specifically. That’s the “how they guided the social worker’s relationship with the family” part of the prompt.
What the Rubric Calls “Accurate Connection”
The rubric reads: “Accurate connection of ethical standards and justification of relevance.” Your link between the NASW standard and the Maderes family specifics must be direct — not a general defense of strengths-based practice. Tie the standard to a concrete moment or dynamic in the case study.
Identifying the Ethical Dilemma in the Maderes Family Case
An ethical dilemma isn’t just a hard situation. It’s a specific conflict between two legitimate professional values where honoring one requires compromising the other. The assignment asks you to identify one dilemma and name the values or standards in conflict.
The clearest dilemma in this case sits at the intersection of self-determination (the parents’ right to make decisions about their family and pursue custody reunification on their own terms) and protection of vulnerable individuals (the worker’s professional and legal obligation to prioritize child safety, particularly for the 11-year-old). These are both core social work values. That’s what makes it a genuine dilemma.
| Ethical Value | NASW Standard | How It Pulls in the Case |
|---|---|---|
| Client Self-Determination | 1.02 | Parents have goals, rights, and preferences about how services are delivered. Overriding them without cause undermines the therapeutic alliance and core social work values. |
| Protection of Vulnerable Individuals | 1.01 and Section 3 | The 11-year-old’s behavioral challenges may indicate unmet safety or therapeutic needs. The worker has an independent professional duty to prioritize that child’s welfare, even if parents disagree about the level of concern warranted. |
| Confidentiality vs. Duty to Report | 1.07 and mandatory reporting law | If family disclosures indicate abuse or neglect risk, the legal duty to report supersedes confidentiality — potentially damaging the trust essential to wraparound team effectiveness. |
Pick one and commit to it. The self-determination vs. child protection tension is the most directly supported by the case details and maps cleanly onto both Barsky’s framework and the NASW policy statement you’re required to use.
Using Barsky’s Six Questions to Think Through the Dilemma
Barsky’s (2023) six-question framework from page 31 is a step-by-step ethical reasoning process. The assignment asks you to “thoroughly describe” how you would use it. That word — thoroughly — is doing real work in the rubric. Don’t list the questions and give one-sentence answers. Work through each one as it applies to the specific dilemma you chose.
The Rubric Word That Separates B Papers From A Papers
The rubric says “Thoroughly addresses Barsky and integrates policy statement.” Each question needs a substantive paragraph — not a bullet and one sentence. Students who lose marks here typically answer Q1 and Q6 well and rush through Q2–Q5. Those middle questions are where the analytical depth lives. Work through all six at roughly equal depth.
Integrating the NASW Child Abuse and Neglect Policy Statement
The assignment asks you to explain how you would integrate the decision guide from the NASW Speaks Policy Statement on Child Abuse and Neglect into your decision-making — and how that statement influences your decision. This is a distinct section from the Barsky framework, even though they’re related.
The policy statement affirms child safety as a paramount value. It calls for trauma-informed, culturally responsive practice. And it positions social workers as both protectors of vulnerable children and advocates for family preservation when safe. That dual obligation is exactly what creates the dilemma you identified — so this source directly illuminates the tension.
The statement also calls for interdisciplinary collaboration, which connects directly to the wraparound model the Maderes family is already embedded in. You can use this to argue that the ethical path forward doesn’t require the worker to act alone: the team structure itself is the appropriate mechanism for navigating the dilemma.
How to Actually Cite the NASW Policy Statement
Treat it as an organizational document in APA 7th: National Association of Social Workers. (Year). NASW speaks: Policy statement on child abuse and neglect. NASW Press. Cite in-text as (NASW, year). Your instructor will know if you’re citing it by name without engaging its content — read the decision guide section before writing this part of your paper.
The “how does this statement influence your decision” question is asking you to show that the policy actively shapes your reasoning — not that you mention it exists. If the policy’s child safety priority creates a higher bar for escalation than the general self-determination standard suggests, say that and show how it shifts your Q6 answer. That integration is what the rubric rewards.
For additional context on how NASW guidelines apply in complex family cases, the NASW Code of Ethics (socialworkers.org) is publicly accessible and the authoritative source for all standards you cite in this paper.
How to Structure Your Paper Using the Provided Template
The assignment tells you to use the heading outline from Template_Ethics Case Study Paper.docx. Follow it exactly. Beyond formatting, here’s how the sections should flow in terms of weight and depth.
The Rubric Criterion Most Students Miss
The rubric includes “Grammar, organization, and adherence to professional tone.” Social work papers have a specific register — reflective and evidence-grounded, not clinical and cold, but not casual either. Avoid first-person opinion statements unsupported by standards or theory. Write as though a supervisor will read this and use it to inform case decisions. In a real practice context, they would.
FAQs: W3 Assignment 1 Ethics Case Study 1
The Short Version: What This Assignment Rewards
This paper rewards students who can move between modes — factual documentation in the case note, critical reflection on prior records, principled application of NASW standards, and structured ethical reasoning through Barsky’s framework. The parts that trip people up are the depth of the Barsky analysis and the genuine integration of the policy statement, not just a passing mention of it.
Follow the template. Use Weisman & Zornado as your case note model. Pick one clear ethical dilemma and stay consistent with it across the Barsky section and the policy statement integration. Cite your sources — every claim about NASW standards should point back to the Code. And write at a professional register throughout: reflective but grounded, analytical but not detached.
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