New thinking on the ‘care’ word – operators and marketers to consider

We learnt something last week and wish to share it with you.

We wrote a script for a video on care workers and asked Pat Sparrow, CEO of ACSA and our partner in agedcare101.com.au, to review it. She questioned our use of the word ‘care’.

Should the work of carers be called ‘care’? Do they deliver ‘care’ or do they deliver ‘support’?
Pat queried is it disrespectful to the home ‘care’ customer or aged ‘care’ resident to say they are being ‘cared’ for?

At first this seemed crazy to us as we deal with aged care marketers every day and hadn’t heard this discussion or argument.

So we started checking recently built websites. The first four screamed the traditional use of the word ‘care’. However the fifth championed the word ‘support’, particularly for home care, or should I say ‘home support’.

It was Uniting’s new site. And being the largest ‘care’ providers in the country and as they have just invested a small fortune on rebranding and researching their messaging, we gave their Chief Customer Officer, Sandra Black, a call.

She confirmed that the ‘care’ word is in fact a problem. In fact their research led them to change their name from UnitingCare to just Uniting because of it – not an insignificant decision.

But why. Sandra explained that disability and home ‘care’ customers especially did not want to be ‘cared’ for, as though they were incapable of looking after themselves. These clients are seeking ‘support’ to live independently, to be their own person in their own home, not a passive entity that a worker comes in and ‘cares’ for.
Good point!

Sandra states that Uniting is shifting away from the ‘passive’ use of the care word. Rather they are saying they “care about rather than care for” a customer. Makes sense.
What about residential aged care, where the staff are more hands on and actually ‘caring’ for residents?
We suggested to Pat Sparrow that we use ‘support’ and ‘support services’ in home care and ‘care’ in residential care.

We agreed for now that this makes sense.
What do you think?