Coping Strategies of City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in Cebu City: Ethical Dilemmas in Decision-Making

Abstract

Social Workers encounter a wide variety of ethical dilemmas in practice. This research will provide a classification of such dilemmas and present coping mechanism in which standard of social work values come into conflict. The study aims to answer the following questions; What are the ethical dilemmas experienced by the City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in Cebu City? What are the coping strategies employed by the City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in Cebu City in managing ethical dilemmas? What intervention program can be proposed based on the findings? This is qualitative research utilizing in-depth interviews and focus group as methods in gathering answers from participants. This type of research methods is the most appropriate for the research topic, “Coping Strategies of City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in Cebu City: Ethical Dilemmas in Decision Making” because it obtained an in-depth response from the City Link Officers thus acquired rich data relevant to the research questions on the coping strategies and ethical dilemmas experienced. The two research methods helped the researcher in exploring the topic further and gathered adequate data. Many themes emerged from the answers of the City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in Cebu City and categorized into three. These emerging themes were receiving gifts, deciding for the client, and sharing client’s information.The City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in Cebu City experienced these dilemmas. Social Workers were aware of the dilemmas but they rather keep it personally to keep the relationship that they have in the community.  From the data gathered by the City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program of Cebu City through focus group discussion (FGD), there were 3 emerging themes such as Monetization of the accepted gifts, advocating the Principle of Self-Determination, advocating the Principle of Confidentiality as coping strategies of City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program in managing ethical dilemmas. These coping strategies that were used by the City Link Officers of PantawidPamilyangPilipino Program in Cebu City were used to lessen the Ethical Dilemmas that they experiencing infield practice. Lastly, it concludes that Social Workers working in the field experienced a different ethical dilemma in working with the clients and at the same time they manage to create a coping mechanism to lessen the dilemmas that they experiencing.

Keywords: City Link Officers, social worker, coping strategies, ethical dilemmas.