An Ethical Advisory Group in a Learning Disability Service

Abstract

This is the second of three papers reporting on a study of the work of an ethical advisory group working within a learning disability service. The part of the study reported in this paper sets out to investigate the ethical content of the group's output by studying the content of its discussions, and its processes of decision-making and conflict management. Three consecutive meetings of the group were recorded and observed. Also, individual members were interviewed. Meeting transcripts were subjected to a qualitative analysis. This revealed that a wide range of ethics-related concepts were articulated in the meetings, and a productive balance seemed to be achieved between conflicting principles. The major tension was between the ethics of care and protection, and the ethics of autonomy. The concept of duty was only expressed in the context of the duty of care, and the ethics of character and virtue were absent, perhaps justifiably. Overt conflict was almost entirely absent, and probably for this reason opinions were sometimes expressed without supporting argument. However the conflict of principles supplied the element of controversy recommended in the literature. The group also showed a willingness to subject its parent organization's actions to ethical analysis.