A recent research showed the aspiration of the elderly to recognition of their individuality. The recognition is hardly satisfied by institutional practices, more and more standardized by new public management (NPM), imported from private enterprise. The professional social work ethics is therefore lived in the tension between submission to the rules and deliberation; it requires taking into account both the complexity of the situations and practices and, on one hand, the aspiration of people to which services are provided, and on the other hand, the recognition of themselves in their singularity and the uniqueness of each experience of aging. The social work, practice prudential (Champy, 2009, 2011, 2012), constantly requiring the exercise of practical wisdom in the deliberation, calls for an intervention with seniors in particular, to an ethic of recognition in its personal or interpersonal and social, even political aspects.