Mastering the Law of Privileged Communication: A Guide for Social Workers

SOCIAL WORKERS always haveheld their obligation to client con-fidentiality as a fundamental precept of professional behavior. Recent regulation of the profession through state licensing statutes has thrust the subject into the legal arena. No social worker can rely any longer on a vague ethical commit-ment to maintaining client privacy. Both for protection of clients and for self-protection, conscientious social workers must learn to read the law. This article provides instruction for social workers on how to master legal literature. Legal writing and legal reasoning, although sometimes logical-ly entangled and shrouded in jargon, are within the competence of nonlawyers, and if social workers fail to master this area, they fail to discharge a distinct pro-fessional responsibility to social work clients. Such legal mastery allows in-formed social workers not only to regulate their professional behavior with confidence but also to contribute con-structively to the continuing public debate that will alter and refine the con-cepts that currently constitute the law of social work confidentiality