Like many others I expect, I’ve been watching too much TV news. As a consequence I’ve been troubling about the state of care. the nature of care, what it means to care, to be a carer and to be cared for. These are challenging times.
During the last year, as a nation, we’ve all been compelled to confront the need for ‘care’ in our society - in care homes, care for the sick and frail, as well as care for working families and children of all ages. Now, as well as healthcare, care more broadly has become very publicly an economic, a political and a moral priority. However, some of the language used about care and care contexts does little to exemplify the substance of the work. ‘Caring’ and ‘Carer’ have become such banal sounding terms that they really belie the complex nature of care practices.
There will no doubt come a time when we all reflect on the people, the communities and the services who have been most neglected during the crisis and we can only hope for a truly progressive re-setting of political priorities. In the meantime perhaps its possible to seize the moment, without reference to political initiatives, to review and better understand the principles and practice of care.
In the field of Early Childhood the development of a better understanding of what constitutes ‘professional care’ has been a focus for critical thinking for some time. Many of us have troubled about the meaning of care, about contexts for care, and about the very people who provide care, and in particular the care of babies and young children.
Although much of my more recent work relates to the care of babies, other life experiences indicate that there are analogies to be drawn across care settings. I have researched and written with my colleague Sacha Powell[1] about care in baby rooms in nurseries and how, at times, functions of care (feeding, changing, and cleaning for example) and processes in care (auditing, accounting and recording for example) are often so time consuming and exhausting that personal, or relational, or individually focused care and reflective practices become a rare luxury of time.
Nevertheless, over time we have observed a range of practices. One of the key elements of the kind of practice that I would like to signify here and which has been strikingly evident in some of my observations, reflects the level of respect that I’ve seen demonstrated for the ‘cared for’ (eg babies) and their families, communities and cultures.
This encompasses the idea that the cared for themselves can sometimes help us to understand how to help them, teach us how to care for them. Even through non-verbal expressions of need - for warmth, space, quietness, change, food, companionship - the ‘cared for’ can help us to care for them, as can their families. But we need to attend, to be watchful, to listen, to be respectful, and I believe that these really are the watchwords, the starting points for care.
Watchful carers, ready to attend, to be responsive and helpful and to interpret expressions and intentions, offer a special kind of care. This way of thinking about respect for those cared for, in contrast to the idea of ‘delivery’ of care, is not new but it is significant now, when the immediacy of the very basic functions of care seem to be all encompassing. It re-presents the cared for, not as vulnerable in the sense that they should be voiceless - and have care ‘done to them’ - but as in need of help to express themselves and develop (or retain) capabilities. And ‘care’, and respectful care, looks different in different places and with different individuals.
Consequently, any template for care would work against the idea that the cared for - the baby, the child, the individual - might have a voice, a preference or a practice that would influence the nature of care offered. Nel Noddings reminds us that ‘there are no recipes for caring‘ and that there are different ‘manifestations of care’ according to the circumstances[2]. Watchful carers will have learned this. Our voices are our own, and our capacities to care can vary too.
Care demands a level of creativity, of intuition, and of professional mastery, each of which are complex ideas. Briefly, creativity, in this way of seeing care, requires a move away from the everydayness of routine practice towards the potential for new ways of seeing, and understanding care, in relation to individuals and groups. Intuition is especially important in care contexts and requires ‘explicit knowledge and implicit ‘know-how’ ... braided together’[3] - knowledge and know-how are of course very different, separately important but powerful in their impact when combined. And professional mastery can then be crafted around these through reflexive, dialogic opportunities, providing a confident platform for respectful provision, wise practice.
It is inspirational to observe how this kind of wise care often means touching lives lightly in the course of everyday practice; how the subtleties evident in intuitive practice can be woven seamlessly through a day, without noise or hefty intervention; and how functions of care can be achieved in care-ful ways. Of course, some carers just come to work - and thank goodness they do - offering kind and functional care according to their day to day capacity to do so. All care demands physical and emotional investment. But the assuredness of wise care is nested on an ever developing knowledge born out of respectful listening, watchfulness, learning about and better understanding those cared for. It demands an intimacy of practice and knowledgeable engagements.
This level of care is not simply measurable on a scale of attainment or achieved through target setting. To achieve a knowledgeable, strong, reliable, resilient and committed care practitioner workforce more creative and careful learning opportunities need to be provided, along with high levels of mentoring and support.
I feel a sense of reassurance as I remember some of the people I’ve met in different places and contexts during my work practices and research projects whose job it was to care for babies and children and whose resilience, energy, enthusiasm and commitment I know will carry them through this astonishingly challenging period of time. I think of those wise carers often.
And finally, let's hope that the constraints in which we are all living can soon be lifted so that the many people, including babies and very young children, who are not having the opportunity to see other faces, feel another's touch, enjoy the company of other babies and the close companionship of other adults, hear songs and rhymes together, and experience the joy of story and the warmth of those intimate group events, can rejoin those worlds.
All of us deserve to live and grow in a world where we can experience kindness and wise care, probably now more than ever.
References
[1] Dr Sacha Powell is now CEO of The Froebel Trust
[2] Noddings N (2012) (3rd Ed) Philosophy of Education, Westview Press: Colorado
[3] Atkinson T and Claxton G (eds) (2000) The Intuitive Practitioner, on the value of not always knowing what one is doing, Open University Press: Buckingham
