Book contents
- Intelligent Kindness
- Reviews
- Intelligent Kindness
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Authors’ Note
- Chapter 1 The Heart of the Matter
- Chapter 2 Rescuing Kindness
- Chapter 3 A Politics of Kindness
- Chapter 4 Building the Case for Kindness
- Chapter 5 Managing Feelings of Love and Hate
- Chapter 6 The Emotional Life of Teams
- Chapter 7 Cooperation and Fragmentation
- Chapter 8 On the Edges of Kinship
- Chapter 9 Unsettling Times
- Chapter 10 Free to Serve the Public?
- Chapter 11 Blame
- Chapter 12 The Hostile Environment
- Chapter 13 The Pull towards Perversion
- Chapter 14 Cultivating Intelligent Kindness
- Chapter 15 Rehabilitating the Welfare State
- Index
- About the Authors
- Acknowledgements
- References
Chapter 8 - On the Edges of Kinship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2020
- Intelligent Kindness
- Reviews
- Intelligent Kindness
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Authors’ Note
- Chapter 1 The Heart of the Matter
- Chapter 2 Rescuing Kindness
- Chapter 3 A Politics of Kindness
- Chapter 4 Building the Case for Kindness
- Chapter 5 Managing Feelings of Love and Hate
- Chapter 6 The Emotional Life of Teams
- Chapter 7 Cooperation and Fragmentation
- Chapter 8 On the Edges of Kinship
- Chapter 9 Unsettling Times
- Chapter 10 Free to Serve the Public?
- Chapter 11 Blame
- Chapter 12 The Hostile Environment
- Chapter 13 The Pull towards Perversion
- Chapter 14 Cultivating Intelligent Kindness
- Chapter 15 Rehabilitating the Welfare State
- Index
- About the Authors
- Acknowledgements
- References
Summary
Powerful political and psychosocial processes influence the extent to which society recognises and responds to its members as kin. There are difficult ‘edges’ at which goodwill and rejection compete for dominance in the public mind. Health and social care staff are frequently working at these edges. This can overlap with, complicate and amplify the powerful emotions and relationships that are described in Chapter 5. Sometimes the dilemma is pretty obvious – the violent drunk haemorrhaging in an accident and emergency department inevitably arouses conflicting responses; the mother who continues to get herself pregnant despite all her previous infants being taken into care. The continued, often dangerously fluctuating, needs of old people with long-term conditions persist in frustrating our wish to remove suffering and can wear us down. Our generosity competes with our instinct to turn away, to recoil, even to punish.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Intelligent KindnessRehabilitating the Welfare State, pp. 99 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020