The Integrity of Care

In appreciating the relationship between each of the five phases of care set out by Tronto and Fisher it is important to avoid a linear or fixed reading of them, rather they need to be approached as iterative and constantly evolving in accordance with the changing nature of any associated needs.

As Tronto explains, “once care needs have been met new ones will arise” (2013:23). This is an inevitable feature of life. Accordingly, this is also why carers need to remain attentive (caring about) throughout, that their approach to caring for and manner of care giving is, and remains, attuned to how it is received. This combination of attentiveness and mutual responsiveness (on the part of both the care giver and the care receiver) is in turn fundamental to appreciating the ongoing ‘becomingness’ of caring with.

The ethics of care theory proposed by FCE scholars is thus “concerned more with responsibility and relationships than rights and rules” (Milligan and Wiles 2010: 743). Moreover, in seeking to expand rather than ‘confine’ its societal relevance, this theory – as evidenced in Fisher and Tronto’s ‘species activity’ definition outlined on the page above - “emerges as both a complex and evolving social phenomenon and as an enduring and inspirational moral value” (Rummery & Fine 2012: 323).

As an integrated framework, but also as individual components, the five stages of care can be as insightful for understanding how particular actions, settings, forms and means of relating to one-another serve to produce examples of ‘good’ care practice, as they can be for explaining cases of ‘bad’ care. Instances of bad or dysfunctional forms of care, for instance, may be due to care giving being undertaken by an individual without them actually caring about the particular need which is being met. The most common occurrence of this would be where care giving is motivated primarily by an associated financial transaction. Whilst this by no means automatically results in bad care, the risk that it may do so increases.

Alternatively, instances of bad care may also arise due to a de-coupling of one or more of Fisher and Tronto’s accompanying ethical elements. For example, there may be a failure to remain responsive to how the care is received. Reasons for this could include an overly rigid set of procedural rules as derived from an ‘expert’ knowledge of how care ‘should’ be practiced, or simply a lack of time due to all the other pressures and competing care needs with which we are confronted in our daily lives.

FCE scholarship is also highly insightful when it comes to considering inequitable distributions of power. This includes, for example, examining “how the powerful might try to twist an understanding of needs, to maintain their positions of power and privilege” (Tronto 1993: 140). We reflect further on the role of power and justice, in a care-full research context, in Lesson 4 of this Unit.

QUESTIONS:

• What are care-full scholars attentive to?
• What needs inform the practice of care-full scholars? (both referring to scholars’ own personal needs and to the needs of those they engage through their practices - of research, teaching, supervision and collaboration)  
• What concerns, motivations and drives inform their practice? (i.e. things they care about at personal, organisational, community, and/or societal level)  
• How are care-full scholars able to respond to what they are/have become attentive to?  
• To what are they able to align their scholarly practice and embrace a responsibility for addressing these needs?
• What visible and invisible practices do they perform everyday, in order to translate those needs, concerns, and motivations into a tangible course/event/process?