The Crisis of care

the long version

There is a crisis in caring for persons that cuts across the boundaries of the helping professions. Patients in hospitals feel depersonalized, students suffer from inadequate attention, clients wonder if therapists really care about them, and parishioners feel unknown in their places of worship. Caregivers are rewarded for efficiency, technical skills, and measurable results, while their concern, attentiveness, and human engagement go unnoticed within their professional organizations and institutions. Arguing that moral judgment and human values must be restored to caregiving in order to revitalize our failing institutions, helping professionals and scholars join together in this volume to explore the ethic of care and the moral sources from which caregivers draw inspiration for their work. Contributors from the fields of medicine, nursing, teaching, ministry, sociology, psychotherapy, theology, and philosophy articulate their values, hopes, commitments, and practices both in theoretical essays and in narratives of caregiving that reveal the complexities of skillful practice. By combining stories of care, the reflections of caregiving practitioners, and interpretations of caregiving within a larger social and theoretical framework, this collection identifies the values and skills involved in quality caregiving at the individual level and affirms their importance for reshaping our public caregiving institutions.