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The struggles of the social care sector have rarely been out of the news in recent months, with an ongoing lack of carers and facilities, low pay and poor conditions, and a devastating impact on hospitals. Talk of reform, structures and cost is everywhere. Against this background, yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Reimagining Care published a report calling for a National Care Covenant, a call to reframe care around human dignity and interdependence. Most of us will experience caring for a family member or friend, and need care ourselves, at some point in our lives. Yet care is often hidden, and financially unrewarded. Care doesn’t sit well in an economy focused on productivity and profit. Too often, our society values people based on what they can produce or contribute financially, and assesses tasks along the same measures. But care does not produce financial wealth, and good care does not rely on output, but on intangible qualities like kindness, listening, valuing. Wealth however comes in many different ways, and care for one another contributes to a very different kind of wealth: human dignity and respect, intergenerational connections, social cohesion and the knowledge that everyone is valued and will still be valued if their lives and bodies change dramatically. Good care recognises that contribution to the Common Good comes in many different guises, few of which are primarily financial. Christian writer Henri Nouwen speaks movingly of leaving a life of academic excellence and speaking engagements to live as part of a community of people with various disabilities. There, he was paired with Adam, a young man with profound developmental disabilities. Nouwen repeatedly says, "It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship." Nouwen experienced learning to be human together, and seeing one another, not through the lens of work, ability or productivity, but of character, kindness and joy. This valuing of every person, and care as valuing our common humanity, is at the heart of the Christian story. The Gospel of John tells the story of the risen Christ meeting the disciples for breakfast on the beach by Lake Galilee, and giving Peter a final command: ‘feed my lambs, tend my sheep’. Peter is told to care, with no strings, no outcome and no justification, other than these are precious people of God. The people of England may not all share one faith, but I hope that they can hear the call for all of us to give and receive care in ways that go beyond structures and costs, but cherish one another’s humanity and dignity, and, like Henri Nouwen, discover, within such care, unexpected treasures of joy.