The scenario is now familiar to most of us who have ordered anything online. 你需要一样东西——一份礼物, a takeaway - and you click through options on a screen before you arrive at your choice and click order. 然后, after a specified amount of time a person arrives at your home with (hopefully) the thing you ordered.
回想一下你上次做上述事情的情景, 你还记得那个送货上门的人吗? 你会记得他们在人群中的脸吗? 你知道他们的名字或者了解他们的背景吗?
对我们大多数人来说, the natural response to the above questions would be along the lines of ‘no, 当然不是!’ The transactions are accepted as impersonal, fleeting and totally isolated from one another. As nice as it might be to be on familiar terms with the person leaving a box on your doorstep, 这不是对交易双方的期望.
Now imagine that the ‘thing’ being ordered is not a meal, or an item but your care. But it’s not even an order that you have made: someone you have never met in an organisation you’ve never heard of has been given a bullet point breakdown of what your needs are, 并且已经“打包”了一些(上床/下床)的需求, 上厕所, getting washed and dressed) and ordered someone in their employment to ‘deliver’ that specific ‘package’ of care.
Most would expect to be on familiar terms with whoever turned up at their door to support them in such a personal way. 事实上, most of us would hope that we had some sort of say over who that person was, and feel confident that we could build a trusting relationship with that person over a period of time. 然而，对于许多正在接受护理的人来说，情况并非如此.
It is increasingly the case that care workers are distributed care tasks in the manner of someone working for Deliveroo: some account might be taken of their location, 但主要是基于它们的可用性, a worker will be allocated a packaged care task and asked to deliver it within a certain time slot, 当这个时间段用完时，其他任务已经为它们准备好了. 他们对这件事几乎没有控制力, no attempt will be made to make introductions or determine whether a relationship can be built, and no account will be made of the wider networks of support that the person may already exist in.
If this sounds like a strangely impersonal way of delivering something so personal, 那是因为它确实是. Not only does it treat the individual looking for care as though they are isolated from the community or networks they are a part of, 但是护工被当作一种工具——一个问题的解决方案.
这有什么影响呢? Perhaps the biggest hidden cost of organising care in this way is how it takes no account of the importance of care as a relationship. 从根本上说，我们大多数人都有关心或被关心的经历. 以我们通常不知道的小方式, we each do or say things in our day to day lives that could be considered acts of care. 聊聊我们这周过得怎么样. 为某人做的饭. 所有这些都是关心的行为.
而我们中的一些人会随意地对陌生人表现出善意, more often than not these acts rest on what our relationship is with a person. 我们对某人有多了解, 我们都同意的事, what our joint interests are: all of these factors and many more can determine what we feel comfortable with when it comes to giving or receiving care.
Without that relationship, without that respect and understanding, care becomes impersonal. 细心的行为被简化为印在一张纸上的一些细节. 所需要的东西的轮廓在那里，但没有什么是“涂上去的”。. Having little to no relationship with the person you are caring for or receiving care from can mean missing out on many elements that can bring real quality of life.
有时，这可能是生与死的区别. 了解你的护工会注意到你是否出了问题. The early signs of sepsis can be mistaken for the symptoms of dementia combined with a cold. If you have a diagnosis of dementia with diabetes people who don’t know you won’t recognise your hypo or hyper symptoms until you’re pretty far gone. 信任的关系可以拯救生命.
It is with this important truth in mind that Equal Care focuses on the relationship between caregiver and care receiver. And we allow both sides of the care relationship to choose: it’s a mutual decision to say yes to the support. 对工人, 这意味着建立持久的机会, fulfilling caregiving relationships rather than being asked to rush between lots of different people day after day. Those who are looking for care or support get to learn about workers’ interests, 同意比赛前的技能和经验.
By understanding and building trust with everyone involved in the care relationship, we can see beyond the individual care needs that might otherwise be ‘itemised’ by other care providers and turned into a transaction - a problem to solve, 这是一件需要交付的东西，而不是再次将护理视为个人的. And it is by giving both caregivers and care receivers the opportunity to create lasting, 他们掌控着相互尊重的关系, that we can slowly eliminate Deliveroo-style care provision and prioritise quality of life needs.
