ACADEMIA Letters Rethinking Care Ethics in a Pandemic: The Case for Synchronous Digital Technology in Social Work Viktoria A. Strunk, Ed.D., Indiana Department of Child Services James E. Willis, III, Ph.D., University of Indianapolis The father said, “I didn’t know it was unsafe to take my children to Wal-Mart during the pandemic. You should have told me the rules.” The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many facets of everyday life, not least those involved in the welfare care of children. The unique challenges presented by the pandemic were quickly addressed with the use of digital technology, like so many other sectors such as education and business. “Some estimates suggest over 500,000 children in the United States enter the foster care system every year with many of them encountering mild to severe emotional, mental, and physical health concerns” (Gardenhire et al., 2019, abstract). Nese et al. (2016) summarize literature that describes four reasons why there is recidivism in child welfare cases. These are child conduct issues, parental substance abuse, domestic violence, and parental mental illness. Thus, strengthening the attachment that parents have with their children can possibly help decrease future abuse. With swift policy changes due to Covid-19, however, it has become increasingly more difficult to navigate the waters of new normalcy in child welfare practices. Parental Contact: Child Welfare Policy According to Choi (2019), “The visitation status is known to be a critical factor in making permanency decisions in child welfare” (p. 2). In Indiana, for example, Family Case Managers are trained to work toward reunification and family preservation. Part of that reunification effort lies in maintaining family bonds through visitation. Typically, visitation is progressed in stages from fully supervised visitation, to monitored, to weekends, and then to a Trial Home Visit. By the time children are ready for a weekend visit without supervision, the onus is on the parents to use sound judgment in keeping their children safe. Safety against an invisible killer, however, is not without hardships. According to the Department for Education (2016), Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: James E. Willis, III, Ph.D., willisj@uindy.edu Citation: Strunk, Ed.D., V.A., Willis, III, Ph.D., J.E. (2022). Rethinking Care Ethics in a Pandemic: The Case for Synchronous Digital Technology in Social Work. Academia Letters, Article 4632. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4632. 1 “The foundation of children’s social care is the work of creating or strengthening the positive relationships around young people and preventing or mitigating relationship breakdown” (as cited in Hampson et al., 2021, p. 8). Using Technology to Maintain Parental Contact Quickly, it became evident that social distancing could help in the prevention efforts of spreading Covid-19. Children in foster care, however, are already socially isolated from their family and friends by design. Changes in policy included verbiage that visitation should be done virtually only, unless court-ordered. As late as 2017, McWey and Cui posited, “Researchers also could examine whether contact via text or computer-mediated video communication (e.g., FaceTime, Skype, Viber) produces benefits similar to those associated with face-to-face contact” (p. 18). The crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic forced this issue in many, if not most, localities. While the anecdotal and perhaps research findings of digital-only contact are likely to be examined in future literature, one can make some ethical inferences about the inherent problems and challenges here. The prism of care ethics will be used because care ethics often inform social work policies (even implicitly), particularly in the case of children (Steckley & Smith, 2011; Banks, 2016; Koggel & Orme, 2010). Care Ethics in Child Welfare Such physical limited contact is, beyond the psychological and emotional costs, ethically tenuous, particularly when considering the role of physicality in care ethics (Bubeck, 1995). The early work of Gilligan (1982) and Noddings (1984), was underpinned with an expressly contextual aspect of care which demanded physical interaction. The notion of virtual, digital care simply did not enter into the ethical calculus. And, while caring activities in general and care ethics in particular have been expanded into this virtual space (Farkas & Romaniuk, 2020; Rider, 2019; Corbera et al., 2020), the specific problem of pandemic social distancing coupled with the nuances of interaction in child welfare demand a push into a new area of “care ethics.” Much of care ethics, particularly in its emphasis on real-world connections and applications (unlike, for example, so-called textbook ethics), relies on the concept of embeddedness, or that application is met with real-world scenarios which are intrinsically unique and not generalizable (Banks, 2016). This is to say that care ethics must operate with a set of principles which are applied often on an as-needed basis. This makes care ethics well-suited for social work with children, and for the challenging situations of social-distancing and the technology employed for overcoming those challenges. The embedded nature of care ethics are also embodied because real-world application requires the physical monitoring of physical wellbeing (i.e. a case worker who can view the body of child to ensure safety and absence of abuse) as well as emotional wellbeing (i.e. a case worker who can use body language and nonverbal Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: James E. Willis, III, Ph.D., willisj@uindy.edu Citation: Strunk, Ed.D., V.A., Willis, III, Ph.D., J.E. (2022). Rethinking Care Ethics in a Pandemic: The Case for Synchronous Digital Technology in Social Work. Academia Letters, Article 4632. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4632. 2 communication to sense problems). The Covid-19 crisis and the social-distancing guidelines, particularly when children were to be visited through digital means only in 2020 and early 2021, presented an immediate problem to both elements of that which is embodied in physical and emotional review because the technology can effectively mask or downplay the things a case worker might check. Similarly, for parent-child contact, the loss of embodiment using digital means presented similar problems: what is lost in the physical proximity may well compromise the wellbeing of frayed, strained, or difficult relationships. Parents were instantly put in the position to navigate technology, some of which they had never used before, to maintain a bond with their children without being able to hug, kiss, and be physically present in the moment. Older children who can carry on conversations with their parents were probably easier to engage, particularly for longer periods of time as visitation can last for several hours. Toddlers, on the other hand, can offer a bigger challenge as many are not necessarily verbal and have difficulty keeping focused. Service providers were also challenged to ensure technology was working correctly so that the visits could start on time, and they had to understand that the free Zoom that many of them were using would instantly shut down after 45 minutes. In addition, many were needed as guides to figuring out how to fill the hours of productive parenting time. Innovators had parents and children creating bingo cards to teach math, telling stories with finger puppets, and using special photo filters to create zany family photos. The time, dedication, and fortitude to making it work, in less than what many believe to be ideal conditions, became the new normal for children in the child welfare system. Care ethics, renegotiated through solely technological mediation, however, can open lines of inquiry not examined previously. With the loss of physical proximity, the social worker and parents/guardians are reliant on asking questions that they may not have posed previously with physical contact. Lines of inquiry could extend to an increased awareness of facial nonverbal communication in videoconferencing and examination of words not used previously in text messages and other written digital communication. This is to say that the loss of physical proximity led to increased hypervigilance to compensate for that loss, and perhaps the actualized application of care ethics over-compensated in techniques that suggest new ways care ethics are practiced in social work, particularly as digital communication and internet connectivity continue to expand. We suggest the ubiquity of technology is not going to decrease, particularly as internet connectivity improves. While policy resistance against the use of synchronous digital technologies may have dominated pre-pandemic child welfare practices, the rapidity of use in a socially-distanced society demonstrates that it can be used effectively to ensure child safety and provide necessary services. Instead of seeing a child once per month in face to face inAcademia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: James E. Willis, III, Ph.D., willisj@uindy.edu Citation: Strunk, Ed.D., V.A., Willis, III, Ph.D., J.E. (2022). Rethinking Care Ethics in a Pandemic: The Case for Synchronous Digital Technology in Social Work. Academia Letters, Article 4632. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4632. 3 teractions, a case manager can see the child multiple times using technology. Coupled with specific communication strategies and a renegotiated care ethics, technology can be used to begin policy changes toward the use of hybridized interactions. This hybrid method could be quite effective in situations in which the case worker is in a different locality than the child or when the child needs to be seen multiple times to assess child safety. Like much of modern life, hybrid uses of technology, whereby communication can be split between physical proximity and online digitalized technology, may well redefine social work to streamline meetings, provide additional synchronous time with children and caregivers, provide additional legal documentation for proceedings, and decrease state expenditures. These tactics should be implemented in a post-pandemic world, but only with the use of a renegotiated care ethics. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: James E. Willis, III, Ph.D., willisj@uindy.edu Citation: Strunk, Ed.D., V.A., Willis, III, Ph.D., J.E. (2022). Rethinking Care Ethics in a Pandemic: The Case for Synchronous Digital Technology in Social Work. Academia Letters, Article 4632. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4632. 4 References Banks, S. (2016). Everyday ethics in professional life: Social work as ethics work. Ethics and Social Welfare, 10(1), 35-52. Bubeck, D. (1995). Care, gender and justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Choi, S. (2019). Improving children-parents visitation for families with substance abuse problems in child welfare. Journal of Social Science for Policy Implications, 7(1), 1-6. Corbera, E., Anguelovski, I., Honey-Rosés, J., & Ruiz-Mallén, I. (2020). Academia in the time of COVID-19: Towards an ethics of care. Planning Theory & Practice, 17, 1-9. Farkas, K.J. & Romaniuk, J.R. (2020) Social work, ethics and vulnerable groups in the time of Coronavirus and COVID-19. Society Register, 4(2), 67-82. https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/ index.php/sr/article/download/22508/21400 Gardenhire, J., Schleiden, C., & Brown, C.C. (2019). Attachment as a tool in the treatment of children within foster care. 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