Life Esidimeni tragedy: articulating ecological justice code branding for social care and mental health practice

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a brand ideal that accounts for practical and responsive benefits that can be derived from a brand (ecological justice support) and the ecological justice brand locus statement, for social and mental health care services for sustainable ethical practice. We argue that sound, carefully considered and efficiently managed ethical standards and values enacting ecological justice can aid with the development of brand ideal and positioning. The paper uses a descriptive analysis to engage notions of an ecological justice trajectory for ethical practice. The practical benefit of utilising the ecological justice brand is to inculcate its advocacy, awareness and implementation in order to curb what may be perceived as unethical practices that practitioners exhibit during practice domains, and the tragic events of the Life Esidimeni Arbitration Panel revelations in South Africa. The responsive benefits include the “best quality of practice life” factor when clients are provided with effective and efficient ethically nurtured services that include an ecological justice framework outline. The theories of Situational, Empirical Ethical Care and Post-Modernism ethics utilised within the confines of fairly ecological justice stimulates positive feelings of utilising ecological justice components in enhancing the richness and depth of the clients’ experience of a well-conceived ethical practice for sustainability. The knowledge of the ecological justice advocacy and implementation ideal can assist social and mental health care practitioners to communicate not only the practical values, but also the responsive values by utilising them to track harm through a case, especially for mental health patients. We end by calling for an ecological justice brand position statement that takes seriously issues of sustainable ethical practice that can contribute towards sustainable development goals for health and justice.

Keywords: Ecological justice (eco-justice), ethical code, brand ideal, brand positioning, sustainability, Life Esidimeni