Care

Laura Steckley

I've been thinking about care a lot lately. I’ve been working on an article about a way of thinking about ethics that, rather than being based on rules, is based on care. I’m also supervising a student as she completes her master’s dissertation on children's experiences of care in residential child care (see https://www.cyc-net.org/CYC-Online /CYC-Online -sep2009-steckley.html if you’re interested in reading about it).

I’ve had an interest in notions of care for a while now. I began to think and talk about care in a more focused way when I moved to Scotland. In Colorado, I had worked in residential treatment centres; in completing applications and CVs here in Scotland I was advised to avoid this word, treatment. The clearest explanation at the time was that people here in the UK would associate it with medical treatment, and that could be confusing. I remember being a bit niggled by this; the purpose of the work, as I saw it then, was a lot more than just care.

It didn’t take me long to begin to realise that this word, care, was used differently here. I also began to see how a treatment orientation sometimes pathologised kids and their families, focusing too narrowly on individuals and immediate contexts. Still, while care appeared in our titles – residential child care, care worker, social care, the Scottish National Care Standards, what was meant by care was not really articulated. Looking back, I do think some of the folks I was working with had a pretty strong tacit understanding of care, but they just didn’t speak about it.

This is due, in part, to a wider context that has prized (and defined) other values and activities much more highly. It seems that care has often been taken for granted as simple, feminine, mundane, private – peripheral to more important social concerns. No wonder care work has been seen in a similar, dim light.

Fortunately, this is beginning to change. Care has come increasingly under the spotlight of people’s thinking, writing and discussions. People are arguing that care should be moved to a central position in our ethics and our politics. This, I imagine, will feel a right fit for many of us in Child and Youth Care.

Care, like love, is a noun and a verb. It is a thing: a feeling, a motivation, a value, a disposition. It is perhaps this passive definition of care that has poorly served the way we have traditionally thought about it. But care is also an activity, and a demanding one at that. No care worker worth her salt can simply feel care towards her kids. She must regularly demonstrate it through her actions. Care demands fortitude, endurance, skills, knowledge and significant engagement of the self.

I know that my early experiences of being cared for shape my current understanding and activities of care, both personally and professionally. The same could be said of my mother, though her early experiences of care were not at all similar to mine. But somehow, as a result, she was determined that her girls would know good care. Her attitude of care was consistent and I was fortunate never to seriously doubt that she deeply cared about my well being.

My mom was really good at the activity of care, as well. I remember my best friend moving away when I was eight, and feeling devastated. She took this seriously, arranging a weekend of sleepovers and special outings before my friend departed. During any tough times of primary school, a note of encouragement would appear in my lunchbox. When I was ten, there was a children's book that I was consumed by; my mom read it so that we could talk about it. Easter baskets were her work of art, with thoughtful gifts as well as jellybeans counted out so that my sister and I wouldn’t feel one of us was favoured over the other. Most days, she put a lot of time and energy into planning and preparing food, particularly the evening meal. Dinners at the weekend were always a bit more special.

Now you may be thinking, depending on your own history and current circumstances, that these are just things that moms do (or dads or parents). This may be true, though it doesn’t detract from the profound importance of these types of activities in the development of resilient, healthy, happy human beings. The significance of my mother’s activities of care take on an even greater meaning when I consider poverty of care she experienced as a child and the resultant difficulties that have plagued her since. She by no means got everything right; no parents do. We had our struggles as a family. But, looking back, I realise my mom laid herself down as a bridge between her own barren childhood and my lush one by comparison. My mom turns seventy this month. Happy birthday, Mom.

At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned an ethics based on care. On one level, it’s easy to see something wrong in an uncaring act towards a young person, for instance, or practice that is simply based on following the rules and collecting one’s paycheque. Attentiveness has been identified as a key ethical element of care (Tronto, 1994). Good care requires attending to the needs of others. The opposites of attentiveness – ignoring, wilful or habitual ignorance – can be considered, then, as moral failings. Residential child care in Scotland has been blighted by accounts of abusive practice, much of which can be characterised as ignorant. This ignorance, however, is located in a wider context of inadequate resources and regard for the sector, currently manifesting in: registration requirements that do not match the demands of the work, poor compensation and status (another mismatch with the demands of the work), poor understanding of the work itself which influences individual placement decisions, decisions affecting establishments and policy decisions.

There is something wrong about the wider ignorance that continues to impact residential child care. This is especially clear when kids experience multiple broken down placements due to an ideological avoidance of residential care; or when workers are told not to speak to former residents if they should encounter them in the high street; or when staff are struggling with stress, injuries or vicarious trauma in unsupportive, often violent work environments, and are then subjected to punitive administrative procedures related to being off sick. These are just a few examples of the manifestations of ignorance, or wilful ignoring, that are still accepted. For too long it seems that the best we could do was just shake our heads.

But change is in the air. A group of people, both in direct and indirect practice, have come together – from a place of deep caring – to engage in activities of care for the sector. (See Mark Smith's article in this issue). It won’t be the first or only group of people working for the development of residential child care. It will, however, be a user led one, with a dominant membership of those engaged in the direct, demanding practice of caring for some of the most traumatised children and young people in Scotland. It is their voices, grounded in the particulars and complexities of that direct care, which too often have been missing from discussions, debates and decisions. Care at this level also demands fortitude, endurance, skills, knowledge and significant engagement of the self. This is an exciting time. I have hope and optimism that the time is ripe for something transformative to happen, something robustly rooted in care.

Reference

Tronto, J. (1994). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. London: Routledge.