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Ethical Issues within Inter-Agency Teams

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Dealing with Ethical Issues within a ‘Multi-Agency’ Team

Since the launch of ‘Supporting People’ the need to become more focused on working in partnership with a number of other agencies has been highlighted so as to ensure good practice in effective and cost efficient service delivery.  There is a greater emphasis on ‘inter-agency’ teams working together with a common aim to provide service to the user.  Teams may be an ad hoc collection of workers particularly concerned with one case, a multidisciplinary team or a larger organisation.  Ways of mapping situations that might clarify the issues under focus, the kind of differences of view that might arise between people and ways of managing those differences in terms of the issues themselves and in terms of the interpersonal dynamics involved should be considered. We need to focus on the management of ethical issues in the working group and the processes through which a group of people can apply principles to ethical dilemmas in a way that is acceptable to everyone involved.

A way of proceeding

A useful tool for such a process would be to have a list of the major ethical concepts relevant to the situation, the principles that seem to be at issue and the areas where these principles seem to be in conflict.  To derive this material, questions need to be asked about the present state of affairs and about available options.  The kinds of questions relevant to this process might be as follows:

	What, if any, aspects of the present situation seem to me to be ethically problematic?
	Why do I think this?
	Which aspects are more and which aspects less problematic?
	Why do I think this?
	How are blame and accountability distributed?
	How is duty distributed?
	What aspects of the situation can I influence?
	How are my duties distributed?
	What are the likely consequences of options available to me, or required of me?

Questions two and four are crucial to this. By asking why we believe something to be morally problematic and why we believe it to be more so, or more importantly so, than something else, we have the opportunity to bring out the principles underlying our moral judgements.

Patterns Of Diversity

How can people with strongly different moral views work together in areas where issues of disagreement are likely to be prominent in the shared practice? In order to be able to do this we need two kinds of information: some ideas about the kind of diversity which we need to manage, and strategies for managing it.

Managing conflict within the team

We need to consider how all of these differences might manifest themselves in the team context, and how they might be managed on an interpersonal and group level.  The essence is conflict, and conflict management.  The issues that are likely to lead to significant disagreement on ethics are likely to be emotive and in a practical or symbolic sense, to be important. Feelings will be invested in these, and in some cases intense and painful experience may be connected with the issues. Disagreements cannot be managed or resolved purely on the basis of reasoned argument. The management of feelings is crucial to the process.

If you require further information or assistance in developing pro-active and high performing teams, contact teambuilders@shn.org.uk or phone 0870 467 0646