Cruz & Associates Presents
Ethical Decision Making and Forensic Social Work
August 7, 2026
9:00am - 12:15pm
CEU: 3 Category I Ethics
Presenter: Veronica E. Cruz, LCSW-C
Required Forms
Sign-in Form
Evaluation Form
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify key ethical challenges across forensic social work settings, including tensions between organizational demands and social work values.
- Explain how ethical decision-making models support the resolution of professional dilemmas.
- Examine practice concerns such as boundaries, role ambiguity, moral injury, and competing ethical obligations.
- Describe the clinical skills needed to make sound ethical decisions in forensic settings.
HANDOUTS
Speaker Presentation & Resources
| Handout Name | Handout (PDF) |
| Ethical Framework | |
| Interdisciplinary Collaboration | |
| Self-care Lifestyle Inventory | |
| | |
Meet the Presenter
Veronica E. Cruz, LCSW-C
CEO
Cruz and Associates, LLC
Ms. Cruz is a bilingual (Spanish/English) clinical and forensic social worker who has worked with children, adolescents and families for over twenty-years. Ms. Cruz was employed for ten years, as a forensic social worker at the Office of the Public Defender in Montgomery County. She specializes in presenting ethics and trauma workshops and attributes her sixteen years of hospital work in combination with her extensive forensic experience, in helping her to see a situation and address it from various perspectives. She has extensive experience in inpatient psych and partial hospitalization psych programs. Ms. Cruz specializes in criminal defense mitigation, dual diagnosis, crisis intervention, addiction, trauma and working with diverse ethnic groups.