Ethical issues in the intervention with families and children

Abstract

This article analyses the performance of ethical responsibility in the field of family intervention. It exposes briefly the double scope of family intervention: the scope of generic measures of family support and the scope of the care and protection of children on social risk. It sets out the features of the ethics of family intervention, pointing out on the one hand, that it is the social mandate which configures the identity and ethics of professional practice and on the other, emphasizing the need to distinguish between ethical, moral and legal norms in addressing the problems and dilemmas of the social intervention. In this context, a series of relevant issues in the ethics of family intervention are suggested. Family intervention involves the exercise of competences with great impact on people’s lives. Therefore, institutions and professionals must recognize those issues and include them in their professional curriculum along with a critical thinking approach on the ethics of social intervention on children, family and youth.