Did anyone ever tell you caring is ‘hard work’? It’s tough when you care about and for someone, but have no power to express it, enact it or offer it. You can even care for someone’s safety but if they don’t want your care, there’s very little you can do about it. In some ways this is similar to the challenges of parenting and grandparenting. You can have all the care in the world but if someone doesn’t wish to receive that care, you experience the frustration of powerlessness. I’m sure many parents know what I’m talking about.

One of the major omissions/silences in any discussion in safety about ethics is any mention of ‘Care Ethics’. It is a glaring omission in the AIHS BoK Chapter on Ethics. I wonder why? Is it because it’s too hard? Is a Deontological ethic (of duty) just easier? Here’s the regulation, here is the standard, police the regulation and ‘do the right thing’. But is that enough?

Barnes comments (p.61 Care in Everyday Life, An Ethic of Care in Practice):

Care has become qualified: we need to know whether it is medical care, health care, nursing care, community care or social care that is needed, in order to determine who has responsibility for ‘delivery’ and whose budget should pay for it.

Barnes discussion regards how a Welfare State provides care and the many ‘caring professions’ that exist in society. She calls this ‘care work’.

In the caring professions there is a strong need for professionals to collaborate in ‘service delivery’ for clients in the ‘care system’. Much of this discussion also involves ‘institutional care’ and includes discussion of what an ‘ethic of care’ means. In this context, Barnes discusses two approaches: ‘choice-and-control’ and ‘care-and-protection’. Each approach takes a different ideological view about the nature of power, personhood and, the power of the other.

There are some interesting comparisons here that are relevant for the risk and safety industry. BTW, the safety industry is not included in any of this discussion about ‘caring professions’. Barnes (p.61) states:

The range of job titles and responsibilities is vast: social worker, care assistant, nurse, occupational therapist, counsellor, play worker, day-care worker, bathing assistant, domiciliary care worker, personal assistant, doctor and physiotherapist are simply a selection.

This got me thinking, if Safety were to be a ‘caring profession’ would it fit in the ‘choice-and-control’ or ‘care-and-protection’ basket? I’m sure the current deontological ideology that governs Safety fits the ‘care-and-protection’ approach. However, Safety is still not considered to be a ‘caring profession’ in the literature.

Barnes (p.72) comments:

The precise power dynamics that operate in the context of different forms of care work obviously vary. But what is evident is that any analysis of the work of care needs to recognise the way in which both discursive power and structural inequalities impact on the relational dynamics of care.

However, in the risk and safety world such a discussion of power is not part of any text I have read in any discussion of ‘an ethic of risk’. I discussed current texts in risk, safety on ethics in Chapter 3 of The Ethics of Risk, A Transdisciplinary-Semiotic Lens. For free download.

One area of concern is how Safety conducts investigations. Again, in this context there is no mention of the nature of power or ‘Care Ethics’. Yet, on many occasions the safety person is thrown into an investigation with no education in trauma engagement or ethics related to care. These are certainly not part of the safety curriculum.

In the caring professions, there is general agreement on core principles of an ethic of care, these are: beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. The other significant thing about Care Ethics is the language of ‘personhood’ and ‘respect for persons’. We are yet to see language like this used in safety.

In the ‘choice-and-control’ approach to Care Ethics we see a handing over of power to the other. This is very much the approach that SPoR adopts in its methods in tackling risk and investigations (SEEK). And, it’s a tough position to take. Relinquishing power to ‘the other’ is a tough position to enact. It is an approach fraught with frustration as described in the opening paragraph.

In the ‘care-and-protection’ approach, it is an easier thing to override the will of ‘another’, in the name of good. This is common in the deontological approach to ethics that argues that ‘do the right thing’ is obvious, impartial and objective. We see this on open display in the AIHS ‘Code of Ethics’: