When a Social Worker Becomes a Voluntary Commissioner and Calls on the Code of Ethics‪.‬

When practicing in a new arena, where does social worker turn for guidance? In October 2000, Governor Parris Glendening appointed me to chair the Special Commission to Study Sexual Orientation Discrimination in Maryland. A search of the Social Work Abstracts Plus database (SWAB+) found no social work literature on the social worker as commissioner of an appointed, ad hoc commission. Articles have been written about a paid commissioner of a department of recreation (Perlmutter & Cnaan, 1999) and by a commissioner of human resources administration (Sabol, 1993). My role was unpaid, short-term (eight months), and a "political appointee" with the task of generating a report with the assistance of 22 other commissioners and the staff of the Human Relations Commission and the governor's office. I referred to the NASW Code of Ethics and to the broader social work literature to guide my work. The Code of Ethics states that social workers "strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice. These activities may be in the form of direct practice, community organizing, supervision, consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy development and implementation, education, and research and evaluation" (NASW, 2000, p. 1).