Just occasionally in a conversation or an exchange you hear a word, and it sparks imagination or memory. I was fortunate and have been now for a few weeks to be listening to the Ctrl + Care podcast – which I can thoroughly recommend – and during one of them one of the two main contributors, Michelle Corrigan spoke about how social care is about discernment and how Ai for instance can never replace the activity and the art of discernment.
I have to confess it’s not a word I have used or reflected on for a long period and certainly not outside what might be spiritual or ecclesiastical corridors but Michelle in using it made me think just what is the role of discernment in social care and I reflected further on this at a conference on social care nursing just the other day. So here are some thoughts.
At first the word discernment sounds like an ancient word – something belonging more to the monastery than the modern care home, more to cloistered silence than the daily demands of home care visits. But I want to suggest that discernment is actually at the very heart of what it means to care and support another. And indeed, it is at the very heart of the distinctiveness of social care nursing.
The word comes from the Latin discernere – to separate, to distinguish, to sift. It is more than decision-making, more than problem-solving. It is attentiveness. It is about listening deeply, weighing not just facts but feelings, not just rules but realities.
It is not simply about seeing but about perceiving, about teasing out what is important from what is secondary, what is of value from what is distraction. In the Christian mystical tradition, discernment was spoken of as the ability to sense where love and life were moving, to detect the whisper of the Spirit amidst the noise of daily routine.
In the ancient traditions, discernment was a virtue. In the Celtic world of this land, it was often linked with the idea of anam cara – the soul friend – the one who helps another see the truth of their life. In the secular and philosophical traditions, discernment was seen as a discipline of wisdom: the slow and patient art of sifting, of waiting for clarity before action.
And I think social care nursing, in its essence, is this: not only the application of knowledge and skill, but the cultivation of soul-friendship, the gift of discernment.
In our care homes and in our homecare services, discernment is what distinguishes a task-driven approach from a relationship-centred practice.
It is the difference between hearing a request for a cup of tea – and recognising the deeper thirst for companionship that lies behind it.
It is the knowledge that when someone living with dementia refuses their medication, it may not be stubbornness – but fear, confusion, or a memory of trauma.
It is the sense that when a resident is restless in the night, the issue is not simply sleeplessness – but someone in need of comfort.
Discernment is what guides a carer to pause for a moment longer at a bedside, to ask the question that was nearly left unasked, to offer dignity in the small acts of attention.
Social care nursing has always been about this art: the art of listening beyond the words, the art of noticing the unspoken. And it is so because it is profoundly about nurturing relationship which is always more than simply performing a task.
John O’Donohue, in his luminous book Anam Cara, writes:
“The heart of discernment is to listen for the presence of the other. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time.”
That is, I suspect, the gift of social care nursing. It is not only about providing treatment or attending to tasks, but about creating the kind of space where someone can rediscover themselves, where their own truth can surface.
We are not technicians of the body alone. We are companions of the soul.
Discernment, in this way, is not a luxury. It is not an added extra. It is the very texture of good care and support. It is what makes social care nursing distinctive – grounded in skill, yes, but rooted in presence, in patience, and in the kind of listening that allows another to become more fully themselves.
The art of discernment in social care and social care nursing is one which I think needs to be rediscovered.
And perhaps today, more than ever, discernment is an act of resistance.
It resists the reduction of care to cost.
It resists the temptation to make relationship secondary to efficiency.
It resists the belief that rules and procedures can ever replace the lived moment of encounter.
Discernment insists that every decision is contextual, every encounter is unique, and every person is worthy of time and thought.
We have not lost this need today. Indeed, in a world of information overload, where care is often reduced to metrics and measures, discernment calls us back to something deeper. It asks us to resist rushing, to question the easy answer, to attend to the fragile humanity in front of us.
This is the distinctiveness of social care nursing. It is not simply about doing for another. It is about being with another. It is about the ancient art of wisdom rooted in the everyday acts of attention.
This is not to dismiss the necessity of policy, procedure, or system. But discernment reminds us that no rulebook can ever replace the lived moment of care, the eye contact, the listening ear, the intuitive sense of what is right in this unique situation.
So let me close with a poem, offered as a meditation, echoing the Celtic soul-tone that John O’Donohue so often gifted us:
In the stillness between sea and stone,
where the wind carries whispers of ancient hills,
discernment walks softly,
like a pilgrim listening for the soul of the land.
It is the knowing of tide from wave,
the hearing of truth in the hush of a pause,
the sight of light breaking through cloud,
revealing what lies hidden, tender, and true.
To discern is to sit by the hearth of another’s being,
to hear the music beneath their silence,
to cradle their story as one cradles flame,
protecting it from the gust of indifference.
And in this gentle seeing,
this soul-friendship born of presence,
we remember that care is not duty alone,
but the ancient art of belonging,
the blessing of one heart recognising another.
Donald Macaskill
