Devi is a social worker who works for a social service agency. Her job entails making clinical assessments for subsidy applications.
Devi routinely submits her assessments to her supervisor, who often rewrites and edits the summaries, overturns some decisions, and gives final approval. However, the supervisor does not sign off on the assessments or indicate in the documentation that she participated in the report preparation or decision. Only Devi’s signature appears in the documentation.
Devi is concerned that her supervisor is misrepresenting the agency’s decision-making protocol by camouflaging the agency’s internal procedures. “Only my name appears in the final assessments even though in many cases it’s my supervisor who made the final decisions behind the scenes. Also, I think this process is just unethical,” said Devi. “It misrepresents how these important decisions are made.”