Issue 149: july 2011

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CYC-Online July 2011  /  Issue 149

It is hard to hold onto any calling to

care that one might have once had in a cli -

mate, when the pres sure is to com plete a

se ries of largely mun dane and mea sur able

tasks. 

In many places the low value placed on

care trans lates, too, to a mon e tary un der -

val u ing. Many care staff are often on

min i mum or min i mal wages. Care homes

are, thus, staffed by those who strug gle to

gain em ploy ment any where else. As soon

as they man age to find an al ter na tive they

do so, with the re sult that the care work-

force is an often tran sient one. As a con se -

quence, re la tion ships are low trust and

in stru men tal. When a carer has so many

beds to make and toi lets to clean and,

more over, has to re cord that he or she

has done so, then a child or adult with

learn ing  or  be hav ioural  dif fi cul ties  who

goes into a strop be comes a real prob lem

– they get in the way of task com ple tion!

And, with min i mal train ing on such is sues

and in the ab sence of a sta ble and con tain -

ing staff cul ture then such strops are taken 

as per sonal threats or chal lenges. A power 

strug gle  en sues,  in struc tions  be come  de -

mands, de mands be come threats and

these threats have to be seen through.

Thus we get to the stage where the very

kind of abu sive be hav iours ex posed in the

doc u men tary  can  come  about.

These  un der val ued,  ar gu ably  op -

pressed, workforces are pre sided over by

an army of reg u la tors and in spec tors. It

has been a de lib er ate strat egy to re duce

costs; ditch the need for pro fes sional qual -

i fi ca tions,  pres ent  care  as  being  at trac tive

to the mar ket and main tain a rhet o ric of

‘qual ity’ and ‘qual ity as sur ance’ through an 

ex pand ing  reg u la tory  ap pa ra tus.  But  this

com pli ance  re gime  has n’t  worked.  This

lat est scan dal is but the lat est ex am ple of

care not being ame na ble to tech ni cal reg u -

la tion.  Talk  of  com pe tent  con fi dent

workforces be gins to sound a bit empty.

My fear is that the po lit i cal re sponse to

the  re al iza tion  that  reg u la tion  has n’t

worked will be to im pose yet more reg u -

la tion. It seems to be the po lit i cal way: the 

rules aren’t work ing, we need more and

better rules. That would merely com -

pound the prob lem.  

Reg u la tion  has n’t  worked  be cause  it  is

the wrong kind of reg u la tion; it is what Bill 

Jor dan (2010) calls con trac tual rather than 

moral  reg u la tion.  Con trac tual  reg u la tion

be lieves that “care” can be set down in a

se ries  of  stan dards,  reg is tra tion  re quire -

ments, ser vice level agree ments and

ex ter nal  mon i tor ing  of  these.  This  elab o -

rate in fra struc ture does not lead to

im prove ment but ac tu ally gets in the way

of care that might be rooted in any deeper 

moral  pur pose.  The  so ci ol o gist,  Zygmunt

Bauman ar gues that when we sur round

care with ever more rules and reg u la tions

we dis si pate the moral pur pose that

draws peo ple to care in the first place. We 

re de fine the task as a tech ni cal rather than 

a moral one. De fin ing care as pri mar ily

tech ni cal gets carers off the hook of moral 

reg u la tion that de mands that they re late

to those they care for on the basis of a

shared hu man ity. This calls for a very dif -

fer ent  kind  of  po lit i cal  and  pro fes sional

cul ture.

Ref er ences

Bauman, Z. (2000) ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’,

Eu ro pean  Jour nal  of  So cial  Work, vol 3, no

1, pp 5-11.

Jor dan, B (2010) Why the Third Way Failed,

Bris tol:  Pol icy  Press.

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I

 am writ ing this in a To ronto air port

cafe hav ing watched an ad vert for

gravy.

Gravy is a word and food fa mil iar in

many cul tures. As a child liv ing in Eng land

there was a bat tle of brands for gravy su -

prem acy; Oxo ver sus Bisto. Both brands

have been house hold names for gen er a -

tions. Re cently, as part of a so cial

re spon si bil ity  cam paign,  Bisto  have

launched their ‘

Bisto Promise

’ bid to re -

claim fam ily meal times from the dis rup tion 

of texting, emails, phone calls, and those

ever-vital ‘pokes’.

They have also de vel oped an app

which en ables mo bile phone users and

other gad get users to change their sta tus

to let peo ple when they’re sit ting down to 

din ner. To get this on your smart phone,

just visit your app store or mar ket place,

search for ‘Bisto’ and down load. This

could be a great op por tu nity to talk to and 

get some tu i tion from our chil dren and

young peo ple and have all the fam ily use it.

Eat ing  to gether  is  an other  uni ver sal

cus tom that tran scends cul ture. Many of

the chil dren we look after have not ex pe -

ri enced reg u lar meals, let alone the

ben e fits of fam ily time around a table. And 

ex pect ing them to just do it is a lit tle un re -

al is tic.

Mod el ling  the  de sired  be hav iour  should 

be the first task, lay ing a place and hop ing

they join you is sec ond, and the third is to

en tice them with foods they like. To -

gether, these steps are more likely to

bring re sults, even if you would n’t usu ally

pre pare such fare. Going so far as to in tro -

duce new foods should hap pen over time,

once the child feels safe.

You may re call a blog I wrote some

time ago en ti tled ‘Chil dren See and Chil -

dren Do’. This prin ci ple has to be up held

at the din ner table if you want to achieve

fam ily  meal times.

Adults must n’t adopt the ‘do as I say

not as I do’ ap proach at din ner; you need

to  dem on strate  the  value  of  ap pre ci at ing

food, con ver sa tion and time spent to -

gether. A shared meal may be the only

op por tu nity  you  have  for  con ver sa tion

that does n’t feel like an in ter ro ga tion.

Ad ver tise ments  from  my  child hood  for

Bisto had the well-known ex pres sion,

“Ahh! Bisto!” This mem o ra ble line com -

bined with the tag ‘Power Down for

Din ner’ cre ated a mod ern day ver sion of a 

house hold brand, using its con sumer fol -

low ing to change so cial be hav iour and put

fam ily time back into meal time.

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CYC-Online July 2011  /  Issue 149

Power Down for Dinner

Estella Abraham

CEO, Fos ter ing  First  In ter na tional

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