Centering Home Care in Bioethics Scholarship, Education, and Practice

Abstract

This commentary responds to “Home Care in America: The Urgent Challenge of Putting Ethical Care into Practice,” by Coleman Solis and colleagues, in the May‐June 2023 issue of the Hastings Center Report. More specifically, we respond to the authors’ call for “inquiry into the nature, value, and practice” of home care. We argue that the most urgently needed normative reset for thinking about care work is the replacement of dominant individualistic thinking with systemic thinking. Deepening a focus on the social, economic, and historical forces that shape the state of contemporary care work will help bioethicists to argue more effectively for improvements to working conditions. In turn, better working conditions will ease the oppositional stance between caregivers and receivers that has been set up by the current system, enabling all parties involved to better pursue the feminist ethical ideal of care.

Exploring a career pathway for home support workers in Ireland: a systematic scoping review of the international evidence

“…These calls to action are underpinned by well-documented challenges internationally associated with low pay and recognition ( 40 , 41 ), stigma ( 42 – 44 ), work stress ( 45 ), and lack of quality standards ( 46 – 49 ). Leadership and multi-agency collaboration efforts focus on workforce planning and sector growth to comprehensively assesses issues in training, recruitment, and retention ( 50 – 54 ).…”