Becoming a social worker requires living with several major contradictions. I have sat through repeated lectures on the importance of the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics, which emphasizes the dignity and worth of the person, the individual right to self-determination, and the ethical mandate to fight oppression. But, working in the field, I quickly came to realize that many social work jobs actively disregard these standards and principles in how clients and workers are treated. Social worker Kim Young uses the phrase “moral injury” to describe the harm caused when social workers are put in situations where they cannot provide the care and services needed, or are forced to act in ways that violate their ethical code due to lack of resources or a reliance on policing and control.

Last year, groups in Chicago organized around a local ordinance called “Treatment Not Trauma,” which aimed to reallocate police funding to non-law-enforcement mental health crisis responses. After long negotiations, the city council narrowly voted to include a compromise version of the plan presented by Mayor Lori Lightfoot that features what is called a “co-responder” model.

In the program passed as part of the 2021 city budget, police officers respond to emergency mental health calls alongside a mental health worker and a paramedic. While this may sound like an improvement on the previous practice of simply sending armed police to mental health crisis calls, this solution leaves much to be desired. Forcing social workers to partner with officers of a police department that has committed and covered up the murder, torture, assault, and disappearing of countless Chicago residents for decades will only cause more harm to people seeking care, as well as moral injury to the social workers who provide support alongside armed agents of the state.