The findings from this study indicate that applying an ethic of care to social work practice requires something other than applying the principles and elements outlined
185 in current ethic of care theory. As many participants pointed out, true care is
difficult to describe, as it is often something that is ‘felt’ and as a result it is difficult to speak about in concrete terms. While many of the features of care that have been discussed from the findings thus far in this chapter, such as empathy, compassion, patience, understanding, deep listening, non-judgment, responsiveness, and concern for the other can and do demonstrate care, there is also something deeper that participants seemed to be referring to when they described caring interactions, yet found difficult to describe. Archibald spoke about how he liked it when his social worker told him he was lazy. He believed that this indicated that she cared about him. When asked why he perceived this as caring rather than judgmental he was not sure how to respond, simply saying ‘I don’t know, it’s not like it’s a compliment or anything, but I know she says it because she cares’. It seems that there was
something about the way that the social worker conveyed care, something that was difficult to explain, that resulted in Archibald feeling cared for rather than offended by the honest comments he received. Another client, Jessie, knew when a social worker was pretending to care, when the care was not genuine. Jessie could not describe this, other than saying she ‘just knew’. Therefore, clients’ experiences of care appeared to be dependent on the dynamics that existed within the relationship and the genuineness of the care that was being offered. These findings may be explained by Gastmans’ (1999) contention that the basis of care is a moral attitude, that is, an attitude of valuing the other. While his theory has been related to care in nursing, it can be applied to care in social work and correlates to the views of social work clients in this study who stated that feeling valued is a pre-requisite to
demonstrations of care. Gastmans (1999, p. 218) describes a caring attitude in the following way:
Nurses build up a caring relationship with a patient because they consider the patient to be important as a person. Care places a person in a situation where he or she can appear as meaningful. Concrete caring actions only have an ethical value in the light of the quality of the caring attitude of which they are the expression.
This view strongly aligns with Bauman’s (1994, 1993) argument that moral responsibility begins with the recognition that above all else, the ‘other’ is a
valuable, fellow human being. Social worker Cloudy Bay explicitly supported these ideas when he said ‘Care is about valuing the other as an important human being’,
186 and other social workers made similar comments to support this view. They spoke about how they would often do that little bit extra, and outside of what was expected as a part of their role. Examples include Cloudy Bay helping a client jump-start a car, Lou making a client’s bed and Kellie watching young children for their sick mother until other arrangements could be made. These findings support studies conducted in the nursing profession (Adamski, Parsons & Hooper 2009;
Montgomery 1993), which identified listening, non-judgment, competent practice and a preparedness to give extra care and attention, that was outside of the expected role as key to caring practice. The powerful impact of feeling valued is clearly visible in experiences related in this study. When clients felt valued they were more inclined to open up, to believe in their abilities to move forward and to take action that led to positive change in their lives.
These findings also extend the arguments presented in the literature about how virtue ethics compliments ethic of care theory (Thomas 2011; Sander-Staudt 2006;
Halwani 2003; Slote 1998). Prominent authors of ethic of care theory (Held 2005; Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982) argue that virtue ethics and an ethic of care are not compatible due to the former placing an emphasis on character traits and the latter emphasising relationships. The findings of my research show that a caring attitude and genuine concern and compassion are as essential as the dynamics of the
relationship in terms of defining and recognising care in direct social work practice. The social workers who participated in this research described a ‘caring orientation’ as being of vital importance for care to be experienced by clients, and client
participants paid particular attention to the demeanour that social workers brought with them into the relationship.
In summary, participants in this study indicated that experiences of true care were not superficial and could not be experienced by social workers simply following ethical guidelines. A deep experience of care was not merely instrumental, but emerged from a moral attitude that aligns with virtue ethics that involved a commitment to valuing the client. Valuing the other incorporates all of the remaining significant findings from this research that inform an ethic of care for direct social work professional practice, contributing knowledge to how care can be practised as an ethic in direct social work practice. Bauman clearly speaks about the