Can kindness escape cruelty? Risks and benefits of incorporating kindness into regulatory culture

Summary

Intelligent kindness has been proposed as a management model for reviving the UK welfare state and returning it to adequate functionality. Its goal, to deliver kindness as a core good, resembles that of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), which sought to provide the compassion of hospice care across all end-of-life care, irrespective of setting. Analysis of the LCP’s eventual failure suggests intelligent kindness faces similar risks, which can be avoided. Distinguishing between providing and enabling kindness, managing the relationship between kindness, material and cognitive resources, having dedicated staff to champion it past the roll-out stage, concurrent research planning and implementation, and careful management of its scope and boundaries as it becomes more mainstream should protect it, and help it become established as part of UK welfare regulatory culture.