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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.
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