Vulnerable People in Our Communities – the Scandal of Abuse and the Cost of Caring

I've waited a few days for the impact of the Panorama programme to be tempered from legitimate and understandable outrage, to a recognition that there is something deeply wrong and dangerously present in our society. The evidence of vulnerable people being abused, tortured and humiliated was sickening, and the systemic nature of this inhuman treatment in one ironically named care home, should rightly outrage – actually for me it went beyond mere anger. But more worrying and more urgent is the too easily trotted out reassurance that this is an isolated incident, that this is so unspeakably apalling that it is inconceivable it is a pervasive practice rather than a one off aberration.

Now without assuming abuse of vulnerable people in care is common, and certainly assuming that the majority of those involved in the care of others are indeed carers, compassionate and professional, protective and supportive in  their relationships,there is still reason to pause, and think. The images on the Panorama programme are of such graphic inhumanity that the deeper question to ask is about the way our money conscious, value seeking, service cutting, economic efficiency indexed culture recovers a more humanly centred approach to our communal life. Jose Comblin the Catholic priest who has written so much on justice, the oppressed and the vulnerable, once said a cultre and society was to be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people. It isn't an original thought – it is however, a fundamental one for a civilised society that claims to pursue human flourishing.

There is a corrosive functionalism operating, and a dehumanising process of calculation at work, when the bottom line, the barcode, the budget and the deficit, are the primary drivers in choosing priorities for how we spend our money. Money wouldn't stop what happened in that care home. But monitoring and control agencies are strapped for cash; private care homes are businesses that need to survive and exist for profit; and therefore quality and number of staff is influenced not by the needs of those cared for but by the business considerations of a private company or owner; and that is one of the levers that often works against the best interests of those vulnerable people for whom we are responsible.

What I found so distressing was the pleasure, the perverse and degrading spectacle of power and strength being used to hurt rather than comfort, to humiliate rather than affirm, to be cruel rather than merciful, and to laugh at weakness rather than embrace and support – in short to despise instead of love, and to wound instead of defend. You have to be so culpably lacking in that common bond of humanity that sees the dignity and worth of each person to inflict such misery. So beyond budgets and money, bottom lines and profits, there is another issue for me, and it is theological. What has our society replaced the imago dei with? If you remove the belief that each person is made in the image of God, has an inherent dignity and worth, that each human being is a reflection of the creative love and imaginative purposefulness of the Creator, what do we put in its place. All kinds of substitutes – human rights, equality and justice before law, legislation about the sanctity of life, the belief in each person's right to choose and decide for themselves – always of course assuming that when some people are less able to use such personal autonomy our society puts in place advocates, befrienders, carers and provisions to maximise their freedom and affirm their dignity and worth.

But underlying all such provisions there has to be in those responsible for the care of the vulnerable person such atttiudes as compassion, respect and recognition of worth; there have to be values and virtues that affirm the humanity of the carer as well as the cared for; there has to be a way of looking at people that sees and understands the incalculable treasure that each human being is. Is that idealistic? Probably. Unrealistic? I hope not. Because what those images of inhumane abuse showed is what happens when a person's dignity and worth as a human being is discounted, and the consequences of such callousness is a dehumanising of the person, and a further raid on the social capital that keeps us safe, respectful and compassionately interested in the wellbeing of others. So even if our secular values  don't have the underpinning of the concept of imago dei, that each person has an intrinsic and inviolable value as a being made in the image of God, there is a need for those who are trained in the care services to be educated in the valuing, respecting and understanding of those people for whom they will care, for whom they will be responsible, and to whom they will be responsive, as one human being to another.

And yes. What happened was criminal. The consequences should be within the justice system. But the exposure of this atrocious practice, which went on over time, should alert us to the likeliehood that other people are equally at risk; and should encourage us to ask deep questions about what it means to form and shape the atttitudes of those entrusted with the care and protection, support and befriending of those amongst us who need much from us, and who give much to us.