Ethics as a practical skill.
Ethical Edge helps health and social care teams think clearly about hard decisions, talk about them openly and act with confidence.
A way of thinking, not a rulebook.
Ethical Edge is a programme of training and support in ethical decision making for Regulated Health and Social Care Services. We work with care service managers and their teams. Wherever this site says “care”, it means both health care and social care.
Ethics does not hand you a script. It gives you a thinking space where you can explore any issue, knowing you have the skills to reach a good decision, and to explain it.
What we are here to do.
Better decisions, made more quickly
To help care teams make good decisions more often, and to make them more quickly.
A shared, everyday skill
Care services where ethical decision making is a skill the whole team shares, every day.
Practical tools for care teams
To give care service managers and their teams practical tools for ethical thinking, through training, resources and ongoing support.
Why we do this work.
The people who make the hardest decisions in care are rarely given the time or the tools to think them through. We believe that when a team can reason well together, decisions are quicker, staff feel more settled and the people they support benefit.
The first time I presented a court statement recommending that a child be received into care, I experienced a moment that would shape my professional life.
I had followed the procedures, completed the assessments and conducted the interviews. I had gathered the information and done everything my training had taught me to do. Yet I was still faced with the hardest part of all: making the right decision.
I realised that none of my studies, training or professional development had fully prepared me for that moment. The responsibility was immense. The decision mattered deeply, particularly to the child, and everyone involved depended on me to make the best decision I could.
That experience left me with a question that has stayed with me throughout my career: how can we better equip people to make sound, ethical decisions when the consequences for others are profound?
It was this question that led me to research, develop and write Ethical Edge.
My aim is to provide you with the mental tools, critical thinking skills and ethical frameworks needed to approach difficult decisions with greater clarity, confidence and consistency. Not simply to follow procedures or apply established rules, but to think carefully, challenge assumptions, recognise competing values and understand the potential consequences of the choices you make.
Because when our decisions affect the lives, wellbeing and futures of others, knowing what to do is not always straightforward. We need to know how to think, how to question and how to arrive at the most defensible decision possible.
Ethical Edge is about helping you develop those capabilities, so that when the difficult decisions come, you are better prepared to make them well.
Jeremy Jayasuriya
Director, Social Work Projects UK
The Ethical Ocean.
A Compass for Elite Decision-Making in Health and Care, by Jeremy R. Jayasuriya. The book sets out the thinking behind Ethical Edge: how moral behaviour, ethical practice and courage work together to produce good decisions.
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