PRINCIPLES AS PRCTICE: Care, Relationship, & Responsibility
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
There is a question that has been quietly brewing within me over the past few years since I started to work with community groups: what does it really mean to act ethically when we work with communities?
Not in theory or reports, but in the everyday, where people carry stories, histories, wounds, and hopes.
Through my involvement in the Just Transition Communities Project, and through the learning and mentoring I received from the Community Chartering Network, I began to see principles differently. Not as a checklist or a form to complete before starting work. But as something far more demanding. Principles became, for me, a way of sensing or enabling a safe space, a way of relating, a way of sensing what is needed, and whether we are being invited to begin at all.
The CRN Ethical and Governance Framework brings this into focus in a way that feels both simple and deeply challenging. It translates that principles-led way of working into clear ethical commitments in practice, grounding those ways of sensing, relating, and deciding in shared responsibility, accountability, and care. It speaks of mutual respect, co-ownership, accessibility, care, transparency, accountability, and the intention to nurture connection, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment. These should not be abstract ideas or aspirational words to sit on a website. These are not words to sit comfortably on a page or leaflet. They are conditions that must be present if we are to work with integrity, shifting away from extractive models and recognising communities as the experts of their own realities.
And yet, so much of what we call community engagement has not always been grounded in these conditions. Too often, communities are asked to share their experiences without clarity about where that information will go, who will hold it, or what will change because of it. People give their time, their knowledge, sometimes their pain, and there is no clear return. This is extraction, it may not always be intentional, but it leaves something behind; mistrust, fatigue, and at times, a quiet growing apathy, especially among younger generations who no longer believe their voices will lead to change.
The CRN framework challenges this directly, it reminds us that community members must be involved in all stages of research, from shaping the questions to making sense of what is found and how it is shared. This is not participation as a gesture, it is co-ownership. It asks us to move differently: to decide with people, not for them, and to recognise knowledge as something we build together, learning from one another along the way.
This resonates within me, with how I was raised. I come from Cusco, Peru, shaped by Andean cosmology, where land, people, and all living beings exist in relationship. We do not enter a place and simply take what we need; we ask permission, and we give something in return. And if we wish to belong to the land, or even if we are only passing through, like a bird, we care for it. We talk to it, we sing to it, we water it, we tend to it, we remain present. We offer all kinds of nourishment to both land and people so that, in turn, it may care for us tomorrow. Relationship is not a moment; it is a series of daily, simple acts of responsibility and care.
Somewhere along the way, much of this has been forgotten. As consumers, we have learned to take with full hands, without always remembering to give back. But I still carry memories of speaking to the mountains, of asking for their counsel, of understanding that presence itself required humility. There is a practice called Pago a la Tierra, an offering to the earth, where before we use or take anything, we give, we offer. We recognise that we are nature, not separate from it. And what stays with me most is this quiet knowing: when something is approached without care, without reciprocity, without honouring its rhythm, it does not disappear, but it withdraws because it does not feel seen.
When I think about research and community work through this lens, it becomes impossible to see communities as sites of data collection. They are not spaces to enter, extract, and leave. They are living systems that require care, attention, and relationship. The framework reflects this in its insistence on dignity, autonomy, and the equal value of different forms of knowledge. In this way, lived experience is not an addition to research, but the ground from which it grows.
Accessibility, too, takes on a deeper meaning. It is not only about whether someone can enter a space, but whether they can truly take part. It asks us to consider language, timing, format, confidence, culture. It asks us to notice who is missing, and why. If our processes exclude, even unintentionally, then we are already shaping outcomes before the work begins. To address this requires intention, flexibility, and humility.
Care and sensitivity are equally essential. We are working in contexts where people carry trauma through migration, poverty, violence, and exclusion. Research cannot be neutral here; it should create conditions where people feel seen, where they can step back, and where they are not asked to give more than they can hold. This shifts the role of the researcher from extracting information to holding space with responsibility.
Transparency, in this sense, becomes an act of trust. People deserve to know how their stories will be used, what the limits of the work are, and what may or may not change. The framework reminds us that consent is not a single moment, but an ongoing conversation. It asks us to remain honest, even when the answers are uncertain.
And then there is accountability. Not the kind that ends when a report is written, but the kind that stays in relationship. The framework asks us to reflect, to learn, and to communicate back to those who have shared their time and knowledge. This is perhaps one of the hardest commitments, because it asks for continuity in systems often built around short-term delivery. So what shall we do? If not sit with what is ending, almost like holding a hospice for ways of working that no longer serve, and at the same time begin to sense what is being born. More flexible, more humble, more human ways of being in systems, rooted in relationship, that do not close when a project ends, but continue to care, to listen, and to grow.
All of this brings me back to a tension I feel often in this work. We operate in systems that demand urgency, quick action, visible outcomes, measurable impact. But meaningful work asks something different of us. It asks us to pay attention and slow down, to listen, to build relationships, to make sense together. This slowing down is often misunderstood as inefficiency or softness yet it is precisely what allows action to be coherent, trusted, and sustained.
What I am learning is that principles are not there to guide perfect behaviour, but to hold us accountable when we are under pressure, when we are unsure, when we are navigating complexity. They help us return to what matters and offer a shared ground across partners and organisations with different cultures, a common language, a collective agreement that, while we work together in a place, we are guided by these principles in a spirit of two-way learning. They help us ask whether we are acting in ways that align with care, respect, and integrity.
Through my learning with the Community Chartering Network, I have come to understand that principles are the most important step, the point at which we decide whether we should do the work at all, and under what conditions it can be carried out with integrity. They are not abstract ideas, but ways of guiding how we act in practice. They keep us rooted in purpose, shaping how we engage, make decisions, and move forward together. And sometimes, they ask something difficult of us. Because if we cannot uphold them, if we cannot stand by them in practice, then perhaps the most ethical thing we can do is not to push forward, but to step back, to reflect, to reframe, and, if we are truly committed, to return only when the conditions are right to do the work with integrity.
Written by Karina E. from GREC (Grampian Regional Equality Council), one of the CRN partnership organisations, and is guided by Moray's Community Research Network (CRN) Ethics Principles.
Part of the Collaboration for Mental Wealth in Moray (CRN), funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and The Young Foundation.
Hosted by Moray Wellbeing Hub CIC, the Collaboration for Mental Wealth in Moray is a network of partners who are researching what works for creating mental wealth in Moray through the co-creation of solutions and community-driven action. Partners in the network are the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI), Moray Art Development Engagement (M:ADE), tsiMORAY, Science Ceilidh, Arrows (A Quarriers Service), Earthtime for All, and Grampian Regional Equalities Council (GREC).