Caring,Social Policy,and Homelessness

Care theory offers a way to overcome a weaknessof liberalism – its reluctance to intervene inthe private lives of adults. In caring for thehomeless, we must sometimes use a limited formof coercion, but our intervention is alwaysinteractive, and the process of finding asolution is one of negotiation between theneeds expressed by the homeless and the needswe infer for them.     

In defense of caring

I hope to persuade Hilde L. Nelson that she is wrong about an ethics of caring....In conclusion, caring is an "ethics of attention," but it includes more than attention. 'Carers' must respond as well as attend. Much more needs to be done in describing caring responses, especially when social problems are involved. I agree with Nelson that an ethics or a moral orientation must deal with social problems. I also agree that, to date, most of us working on caring have written little on the subject. However, I do not agree that an ethics of caring is unable to address social problems. We have to work at showing that it can.