On 20 February, a webinar organised by the Parents, Families and Allies Network (PFAN) and ATD Fourth World sparked conversations about the ethics of care between professionals and people living in poverty. PFAN co-chairs Tammy Mayes and Simon Haworth facilitated this meeting and were joined by Celia Consolini, who presented ATD’s practices based on relationships and genuine care.

Above: Part 1 of the webinar, with Celia’s presentation

Tammy Mayes is a parent advocate, co-chair of PFAN and has been involved with ATD Fourth World for over twenty years. She introduced the meeting by reminding everyone that at ATD, “we leave no one behind”.

Support without judgment

Celia Consolini, an ATD Fourth World ally who was previously a full-time team member, described how our Together in Dignity programme supports people through long-term, one-to-one, caring relationships.

This programme includes well-being days and breaks for families or for isolated adults, coffee mornings to strengthen peer support networks, and family and crisis support.

“Almost always, there are barriers for people experiencing poverty to access their rights. People need accompaniment to overcome those barriers. This accompaniment is a learning process and, when done in the right way, it empowers people to be more confident and better prepared for future challenges” – ATD Fourth World team member.

This accompaniment can include home visits, supportive phone calls, regular lunches, help filling out forms, going to the job centre together, offering emotional support, or just listening to someone’s worries when they drop by our centre.

Tammy responded:

“If it hadn’t been for ATD, I wouldn’t been doing this now. Because they’re the ones who gave me the confidence, they’re the ones that looked after [my family] and helped us to know that we are capable of more.”

Recipe for support

Celia concluded with a recipe for supporting people in a caring and non-judgmental way:

• Being there in the important moments, such as medical appointments, funerals of a loved one, or other crises;
• Deep listening, empathy, patience – being committed to understanding the other person’s perspective, actively listening, not interrupting, not judging;
• Creating bonds with the whole family, being patient with children and making sure no one is excluded. Building trust with parents by spending time with their children, to allow them to relax and chat with peers;
• Taking time for an unplanned chat when running into someone accidentally;
• Getting to know adults and children and remembering what they like to do so as to tailor well-being activities and support to their preferences and needs;
• Offering long-term, one-to-one support for the same people over several months or years.

(Celia’s full presentation is in the video above and also written out at the end of this article.)

The ethics of care and love

Reacting to Tammy and Celia’s contributions, Dr. Simon Haworth, social work academic and member of PFAN and ATD Fourth World, further defined the ethics of care.

“The ethics of care is based on human relationships. It moves away from a procedural and bureaucratic way of doing things, and towards people supporting each other to meet their needs through human interactions and relationships.”

Above: Part 2 of the webinar, discussing the ethics of care

A practice rooted in the ethics of care is about non-judgment, joint problem-solving, reciprocity, and supporting people’s free agency.

“In professional documents, there’s been an aversion to the word love – which is one of the things I love about ATD. We should love people, isn’t that what we’re involved in this for?”

Still today, families in poverty are labelled and stigmatised, and that can be amplified in prejudicial professional views that confuse poverty with neglect. “It’s an attack on the Right to Family Life for families in poverty”, Simon said.

Has the ethics of care been replaced by an ethics of bureaucracy and punishment in today’s social work practice? That’s what worries Simon.

“Social work has gone away from a principle of non-abandonment. Whereas to genuinely enact an ethic of care, you have to stand with families, communities and people over the long-term. Love and care aren’t time limited.”

He concludes: “Too much of our professional services are accountable to the government, processes and services. Unless we are genuinely accountable to the people and families we work with, and we view it as our primary accountability, I don’t think they’ll ever feel we have an ethic of care for them.”

Poverty is not neglect

Tammy expressed her frustration that poverty is confused with neglect by social workers – not having curtains, not having a carpet, humidity, using a food bank, will be used against you to say that you’re not taking care of your children. Instead of being supported to face poverty, families in the UK are being separated.

“The ethics of care is supporting families to be able to be a family.”

As Tammy reminded participants, the Right to Family Life, article 8 of the Human Rights Act, highlights that removing children is a last resort. However, people living in poverty are disproportionately targeted by child protection interventions and separation.

“The trauma of separating a family lives on. It doesn’t go away.”

Wrapping up, Tammy also highlighted that in the United States, it is now in the law that poverty is not neglect. She urged the British government to do the same.

In addition, Celia said she is saddened to hear that social workers who are genuinely caring are frustrated that they can’t support families because of the broader system. But she stayed hopeful: “It’s good to hear that there are caring social workers out there. We need to fight to bring love back at the centre of the practice. Love hasn’t disappeared.”

Discussion between participants

Simon facilitated a discussion between participants. Here are some of the contributions:

Above: Part 3 of the webinar, with group discussion

• The two-child benefit cap, which pushes children and families into poverty in the UK, should be scrapped.
• The focus on risk in social work practice, and risk-aversion being prioritised over support, are a barrier to the ethics of care.
• The blame through neglect needs to be turned around: it is the government and society that are neglecting families and children living in poverty. The government is the one responsible for supporting people in poverty.
• Language can be dehumanising and restrictive, and words like ‘contact’, ‘placement’ or ‘service-user’ erase human relationships and care from social work practice.
• We need to stop pitting people and families against each other, and come back to a practice that wants to keep families together.
• Social work training needs to better understand disabilities, including hidden disabilities like ADHD, and the lack of awareness and appropriate support that parents with disabilities experience.
• Decisions in social work are made outside of the relational context, by people who have little contact with the family or experts who have seen parents once. Decisions are almost mathematical, and influenced by resources, so families in poverty are being hit twice.
• In addition to social workers, people with whom families come into contact every day including teachers and support staff in schools, heath and social care staff, have to be incorporated in the discussions about ethics of care.
• Parent Advocacy and other peer support initiatives rooted in the ethics of care are powerful to challenge the status quo and support families to access their rights.

Thank you to all attendees for such inspiring conversations on the ethics of care, and thanks to Megan Easton for editing the video footage.

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Full presentation: Together in Dignity and the ethics of care

The aim of the Together in Dignity Programme is to offer vulnerable families resources to get through times of crisis, build upon their strengths, develop support networks, and broaden their skills, confidence, and knowledge in order to pursue their goals and aspirations. This programme is twofold: it includes a Community Outreach and Peer Support project, and the Getting Away From It project.

The Getting Away From It project aims to offer families and adults time away from the day-to-day pressures and anxieties of a life in poverty as well as an opportunity to share experiences, strengthen relationships and form new friendships.

Day-to-day activities in this project include monthly well-being days, for adults, and for families, at our centre in London or in Surrey; and well-being breaks, at Frimhurst Family House where ATD has a centre that can welcome individuals and families for a couple days or a week to go on holiday.

This is usually how people first meet ATD, and it contributes to creating long-lasting, trustworthy relationships with adults and children. This is essential to the support we offer.

I remember a mother, that I’ve known for over two years now through multiple well-being activities, telling me that seeing me interact so patiently and engaging with her children makes her so happy and she trusts that I’m genuinely here to support her family.

Our Community Outreach and Peer Support project, aims to tackle the issues that surround persistent poverty and social exclusion such as social service intervention, limited employment opportunities, debt, insecure housing and poor health. Day-to-day activities in this project include:

Strengthening peer support, with coffee mornings organised in London and Surrey.

Outreach in the community by volunteering with other organisations to meet vulnerable adults and children, and get to know the services available in the community. For instance, for a year I went to a playgroup every Friday with Parent Action, where I saw parents already involved with ATD and encouraged them to keep coming, met new mothers that I introduced to ATD and who now come to activities in London. I also discovered so many resources and services in the community that I could signpost families to. This increases the quality of the support we offer, and strengthens links with the parents that I saw weekly at this playgroup.

And, what I think best represents the ethics of care that ATD adopts, is the family and crisis support activities. Through these, we support people in poverty to face challenges and access their rights.

“Almost always, there are barriers for people experiencing poverty to access their rights. People need accompaniment to overcome those barriers. This accompaniment is a learning process and, when done in the right way, empowers people to be more confident and better prepared for future challenges” – a Community Support Worker at ATD Fourth World

This accompaniment can look like home visits, supportive phone calls, regular lunches with isolated adults, filling forms together, going to the job centre together, offering emotional support and listening to someone’s worries when they drop by the office.

Our ‘office’ in London really is a big house, and we have a nice dining room where we always offer something to drink, some snacks, and a listening ear when people drop by, before they have an activity, a meeting… There’s always someone to chat to.

Our aim is for the people we are supporting to set and achieve their own goals. One community support worker in the team said: “I advocate for people by listening, agreeing on a way forward together, and then often acting as a bridge between people and the services they are trying to access.”

We give advice and signpost to services, but at the end of the day we respect people’s decisions regarding what they need and what they want to do. We work with people, not for them.

Team members also learn a lot from delivering this support. Over the years, we have sharpened our understanding of poverty and the services people are trying to access as we witness the barriers people face when accessing their rights.

One mum we have supported for years has said:

“ATD Fourth World has made a huge difference in my life. I have felt that I am not alone and that I have support. They’ve instilled back some confidence in me, confidence that sometimes gets knocked down by our crazy system. With ATD, you remember to trust yourself again, and to do the right thing regardless of what’s being thrown at you by life.”

Now I’ll give a personal example of support I’ve offered.

For the past year I’ve accompanied senior team members during home visits, in particular with one woman I’ve created a special bond with.

Now, I’ve left ATD as a full-time team member, but I still volunteer my time and see this woman monthly for a lunch. I’m hoping to make a difference by supporting her to continue her creative writing regularly and making her feel less isolated. Also, I feel the relationship is reciprocal, she asks things about my life and I’m happy to share with her, and she’ll remember things and ask me how it’s going. We’ll chat, laugh and have lunch, in between talking about the support she needs, me making a call to book an appointment with her, helping her read and understand a letter… We’re truly having a nice moment together.

Supporting her is getting to know her, and knowing that she doesn’t like when she cannot hear what a professional is saying even when we repeat it to her. This means advocating for her during medical appointments by asking professionals to repeat things louder so that she can hear them herself.

Supporting her is knowing how important writing is for her, and taking time to write, print and laminate her work with her.

Supporting her means taking a lot of time to chat during visits before diving into more difficult topics.

I learned all this by observing team members and discussing with colleagues, to be able to offer the best possible support to ATD members. And it’s very tailored, one-to-on support.

The way I supported families and individuals at ATD in a caring manner was:

• By being there in the important moments: medical appointments, funerals of a relative, and other crises;
• With deep listening, empathy, patience: being committed to understanding the other person’s perspective, actively listening, not interrupting, not judging;
• By creating bonds with the whole family, being patient with children and making sure no one is excluded. Building trust with parents, allowing them to relax and chat with peers while I spent time with the children;
• By taking time to chat when running into someone in our office even when I’m not part of an activity or when there is nothing going on;
• By getting to know adults and children and remembering what they like to do, to tailor well-being activities and support to their preferences and needs;
• With long-term support, by supporting the same people over several months or years.

I’ll conclude by saying that at ATD, we seek to help people rebuild their confidence and trust in themselves and in others, always with compassion and no judgement. Our family support project goes hand in hand with all other aspects of our work, including the well-being activities, and our research and advocacy programme Giving Poverty a Voice.

The goal, at ATD, is to create long-term, one-to-one and caring relationships with the people we support and work with, and to empower people and help them achieve their goals, be better equipped to face future difficulties and get out of deep poverty.