We are happy to announce the book launch on April 5, 2025 of Andries Baart & Guus Timmerman (2025). Relational Caring and Presence Theory in Health Care and Social Work: A Care-Ethical Perspective. Policy Press. The book will be introduced by Andries Baart with a response by Prof. Emmerentia Du Plessis and dr. Rayne Stroebel, in a hybrid meeting: live / streamed: Optentia (NWU) is organizing and hosting this book launch.
The newly published book Relational Caring and Presence Theory in Health Care and Social Work: A Care-Ethical Perspective addresses a deep and globally felt dissatisfaction, among citizens in general but also among professionals. In healthcare, the social domain, in education, in the domain of housing, but also in psychiatry, youth care, and, for example, public administration, things have too often gone off course. As a result, there is a growing gap between the regime of competent professionals and managers, on the one hand, and the lifeworld of patients, clients, pupils, and residents with their needs, concerns, and longings, on the other. And also a gap between the institutional logic of organisations and their administration and quality systems, on the one hand, and the everyday practice and practical wisdom of front-line professionals, on the other. In these interrelated gaps, disconnected competences, bureaucracy, aloofness, mismatches, and distrust are proliferating. The relentless improvements since the 1980s hardly repair these deficits because they are producing more of the same. People, both as citizens and as professionals, hardly feel seen. Their distrust toward fellow citizens, their dissatisfaction with their work and their receptivity to populism are growing.
The book elaborates the thesis that no form of care, help, or support can do without this relational core, with the risk that seekers of help feel abandoned. It is precisely this experience of not being included that fuels discontent worldwide. And not being allowed to practise relational caring is conducive to satisfaction fatigue and burnout of professionals. The elaboration of these themes as presence (theory and approach), is done in close alignment with the political interpretation of ethics of care, in this case with a strong empirical basis and inductive conceptualization. The intended practices are rooted in good patient observation and interpretation. Although most of the qualitative research it relies on is conducted in the Netherlands, the book is international in scope and relevance. During this book launch, one the authors, Andries Baart, will present some of the core chapters of the book. Two reviewers, Prof. Du Plessis and dr. Stroebel will respond and kick off the discussion.
Andries Baart has been (an extraordinary) professor from 1991 to the present; is educated as social scientist and theologian (MA) and philosopher (PhD). Since 2015, he has been an Associate Professor at North-West University in South Africa. From 2004-2023, he worked with and from the Presence Foundation. He is the founder of presence theory. http://www.presentie.nl
and http://www.andriesbaart.nl.
Emmerentia Du Plessis (Professor / PhD Nursing Science) currently works at the School of Nursing Science, North-West University South Africa. Her current project is ‘Caring presence in nursing’. Her expertise: Presence, relational care, qualitative research, Psychiatry, Nursing Education, Nursing administration.
Rayne Stroebel holds a master’s and a doctoral degree in Dementia Studies from Stirling University in the UK. He is the managing director of GERATEC (Gerontological Research, Training, Education and Care), a company that provides services to the long-term care sector and the regional coordinator in South Africa of The Eden Alternative, a corporate social investment project of GERATEC that aims at changing the institutional culture of care homes.