Care

I had one of those sixties-seventies childhoods that now features in nostalgia shows. Airfix kits, chopper bikes, mivvy lollies and trips to Wittering on the south coast to play on the shingle beach. Now, my childhood had its eccentricities, as those who know me, and my siblings, will be unsurprised to hear, but it had, one consistent feature, love. Total, protecting and, of course, wholly reciprocated. I know therefore what care and caring means. I know too that the words 'social care' do not mean the same thing, however dedicated the professionals we charge with the responsibility of looking after vulnerable young people. 

Every so often a shocking case of cruelty and neglect penetrates public consciousness, Baby P, Victoria Climbie, and we recoil. How can it be? How could the authorities have missed something so awful, so obvious now we have been alerted to it? The truth however, is more shocking than these cases suggest. Cruelty and neglect are common. Not perhaps at the level of the high profile cases but still destroying lives. Treatment that passes misery from parent to child and, as the wheel turns, onward. The reason that the cases were missed, and this is not to excuse poor systems and inadequate professionalism, is that they were among many and that the threshold at which attention is paid is high, way beyond unhappiness and damage, beyond even some physical abuse.

There is much attention to pushing forward the boundaries of computing in the service of medicine. In particular the area of so-called e-health is receiving significant attention and funding. By contrast research on the application of 'informatics' to social care is negligible.

The extraordinarily hard pressed and under resourced social care professionals could be well served by tools that would allow them to coordinate, liaise with other agencies, synthesise information, alert to unusual patterns, support behaviour change, manage complex interactions with extended networks of individuals. All in a manner that preserves security and privacy. These are areas where computer science research can contribute. Instead social care professionals are burdened by the worst kind of enterprise systems that compel them to a regimen of time-consuming and largely unproductive reporting and form-filling that runs directly counter to the tasks they are charged with. If even a small percentage of the money spent on medical research were devoted to developing new systems and technologies to support social care the societal and indeed health outcomes could be very significant.

When the term 'in care' is used it may be worth asking 'in -whose- care'. The answer clearly is in yours and mine. The failings of social care are our failings; failings of responsibility and empathy and, yes, humanity.