A Caring Profession? The Ethics of Care and Social Work with Older People

The feminist ethics of care present a challenge to social workers to re-assess not only the place of care within professional social work practice but also the way in which concepts of justice, autonomy and rights are conceptualized and ageing is understood. In this article, the arguments for an ethics of care are considered in relation to social work practice with older people. It is argued that the feminist ethics of care offer useful insights that are relevant to the practice of social work, particularly within contemporary demographic, economic, political and organizational contexts, all of which have made the task more complex and confusing.