A Service of the Children S Bureau, Member of the T/TA Network s1

A service of the Children’s Bureau, member of the T/TA Network

Peer Training Network National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement

Responses to Wisconsin’s Request for Information on an Ethics Training Regarding Social Networking and Electronic Communication 10/27/2010

Request:

Tammy Snortum, University of Wisconsin, writes: "We are in the process of developing a child welfare specific training on social work ethics and boundaries as they relate to social networking sites. As you can imagine, we’ve engaged in quite interesting discussions about how child protection and juvenile justice workers are utilizing sites such as Face book to gather information about the families they work with, the utilization of text messaging to communicate with clients, the legality verses ethicality of electronic communication/social networking, etc. There is very little information or literature that addresses this subject from a child welfare perspective (although the medical community has developed interesting guidelines). I’m wondering if other states (preferably those with county based child welfare systems) have developed ethics and boundaries training and/or policies to address social networking sites. Any information that you or others on the listserv have would be much appreciated. We are developing this training for the 2011-2013 round of Ethics and Boundaries."

Responses:

1. Bridget Clark, Louisiana: Louisiana sent this out to staff. This is as much as we have done thus far. [refer to “Louisiana’s Memo on use of Social Networking Sites.”]

2. Andrea Poole, New Mexico: Interesting that this came the same day from the National Children’s Advocacy Center (www.nationalcac.org):

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