The situation presented in the case study is a classic scenario between the letter and the spirit of the law. From a purely legalistic perspective, the solution is obvious – Harry has to report Dora’s unaccounted incomes in order to uphold the law, without consideration for personal relationships as well as long or short-term development for Dora and her family. The purpose of public aid programs is to alleviate people from miserable poverty (Herring, 2017). As it stands, the existing welfare programs and regulations are imperfect and succeed in pushing people below the poverty line rather than alleviating them (Herring, 2017). Therefore, from a spirit of the law perspective, pursuing the facilitation of imperfect regulations is not just.
The ethical analysis of the situation does not give credibility to the legalistic approach either. From a utilitarian perspective, such an action would result in negative happiness (Herring, 2017). Dora’s situation would not improve, the trust between her and the social worker (as well as the institution) would be ruined, and she would not be able to babysit other children as well. She will remain below the poverty line, discouraged from looking to improve her position. Alternatively, she would hide her unmentioned activities and still receive aid, meaning that the point of reporting would remain moot. In fact, it would encourage a type of behavior close to illegal.
All decisions and interventions can be roughly classified into two groups – rationalist and incremental. A rationalist approach stands for what we ought to do, whereas the incremental one considers only solutions that can be reasonably deployed in a situation (Herring, 2017). With Harry and Dora, blind adherence to the letter of the law will lead to nothing positive for anyone. Instead, Harry should cordially inform her about how her welfare program works and suggest not to disclose it to anyone. Given that her job training would be completed soon, the woman would not require social support for much longer.
Reference
Herring, J. (2017). Legal ethics. Oxford University Press.