SCWK90055 Chap.8 Duty of Care, Duty to Warn and Confidentiality
Duty of Care, Duty to Warn and Confidentiality
Two common law duties follow social workers into every setting: the duty of care, and the separate duty to warn. This chapter explains where the duty of care came from and the five principles a court checks: a special relationship, harm caused, harm that was foreseeable, a risk more than remote judged for the particular person, and conduct below the standard of a reasonable body of like professionals.
It shows how the Wrongs Act and the Code reflect the same duty. It then separates the two forms of the duty to warn and works through the three Tarasoff principles that decide when a third party must be warned directly. Finally it maps the Victorian statutes that protect confidentiality, those that override it, including mandatory reporting and the failure to disclose offence, and the privilege defences that remain.
Each principle is applied to scenarios written for this guide, so you can rehearse the short-answer form in which these duties are most often examined.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The five duty of care principles
- 02
Risk and the standard of care
- 03
Warning clients about intervention risks
- 04
Tarasoff and warning third parties
- 05
Statutes that protect or override confidentiality
- 06
Mandatory reporting and privilege
Worked example · free
Does a threat create a duty to warn?
- 1Means to limit: you hold contact details and can warn him, so you have the means to lessen the harm.
- 1Identifiable and foreseeable: the threat names a specific person and a time, so the risk is foreseeable.
- 1Inaction increases risk: doing nothing leaves the partner unaware and less safe.
- 1Action: warn the partner directly about the specific threat, then record and consult.
Key terms
- Special relationship
- A special relationship is the connection, such as worker and client, that creates a duty of care.
- Standard of care
- The standard of care is the level of skill and care that a reasonable group of similarly trained peers would accept.
- Mandatory reporting
- Mandatory reporting is a legal requirement on specified people to report suspected abuse of children to authorities.
- Failure to disclose offence
- The failure to disclose offence is the Victorian crime of an adult not telling police about known sexual abuse of a child under 16 by an adult.
- Tarasoff principles
- The Tarasoff principles are the three tests from a 1976 United States case for when a practitioner must warn a threatened person.
Duty of Care, Duty to Warn and Confidentiality FAQ
What must be shown for a social worker to be negligent?
All five duty of care principles: a special relationship, actual harm, harm that was foreseeable, a risk more than remote for that person, and conduct below the standard of a reasonable body of comparable professionals. If any one fails, there is no breach.
Who sets the standard of care?
The court asks what a reasonable group of similarly trained peers would have done, drawing on practice standards, the Code and agency policy. A junior worker is judged against junior peers and a specialist against specialists.
Is calling the police enough to meet a duty to warn?
Not under the Tarasoff principles. The case held that alerting campus police was not sufficient; the practitioner had to warn the identifiable person about the specific threat. Police contact may still be appropriate, but it does not replace the direct warning.
Can a social worker promise a client complete confidentiality?
No. Mandatory reporting laws, the failure to disclose offence, public health reporting and court orders can all require disclosure, and social work conversations are not among the privileged categories. Clients should be told about these limits at the start.
Do social workers have to report every crime they hear about?
No. Apart from specific laws such as mandatory reporting and the failure to disclose offence, there is no general duty to report a crime. Helping someone commit a crime, or hiding one for personal gain, is itself an offence.
Assessment move
Learn the five duty of care principles as a chain and practise walking any scenario through them in order, quoting a fact for each link; this matches the negligence short answer used as a Test 1 sample. Learn the two forms of the duty to warn and the three Tarasoff questions, and remember that the warning goes to the person at risk.
Build a two-column list of laws that protect confidentiality and laws that override it, with one line on what each does. Finish by practising combined scenarios that start with the Code, move to statutes and end with the action you would take.
Working through Duty of Care, Duty to Warn and Confidentiality in SCWK90055? Sia is AskSia’s AI Social Work tutor — ask any SCWK90055 Duty of Care, Duty to Warn and Confidentiality question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how SCWK90055 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.
