The Needs We Carry
All books · Ethics and practice
How can help leave someone more able to choose?
By Justin McDermott · Complete manuscript · Unpublished
Help carries power when it shapes access to treatment, housing, money or safety. The Needs We Carry examines what support owes to the person living its effects.
Inside the book
The book asks how need, agency and responsibility can be negotiated in families, relationships and services. Supporting someone can involve difficult choices about safety, resources and the future. Those choices also affect whose judgment is heard and what options remain available. The guiding question is whether help can leave the person receiving it more able to choose.
The power involved when support shapes access to essential needs.
How need, agency and responsibility meet in relationships and services.
What those offering help owe to the person living with its consequences.
Who it is for
Begin here if your interest is in the everyday ethics of care. The book is for peer workers, practitioners, families and people receiving support, with space for the different responsibilities and experiences each brings.
Its place in the Compass
Within The Dream State Compass, this book brings questions of meaning and agency into the relationships where help is offered and received. The Humans We Become widens the inquiry to the conditions we create for one another.
Explore The Humans We Become · About the Compass project
A shorter way into the writing
The Weight of Maybe. A related reflection on caution, opportunity and the choices made in the name of possible harm.
Read more or get in touch
This is a complete, unpublished manuscript. Publishing enquiries welcome. To request a reading sample or discuss editorial interest, email Justin about The Needs We Carry.
Browse all five books · Read the Field Notes · Meet the author