Even spousal care is deeply imperfect, so the odds of recruiting a really excellent workforce of carers in the numbers required, even after assuming a more liberal migration policy and better pay, feel very long indeed. One of the prompts for the book was her own experience of loss of control and autonomy as a young mother, caring for a newborn while her father gradually died. Women were conspicuously absent from 18 th century economic thought, their care duties relegated to the private domain, considered a natural aptitude rather than a valuable form of labour that sustained the market. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in care and, as she shows, we probably all should be. Indeed, increasingly, even rudimentary caring interactions are shrinking, with carers’ time clipped so tightly that even eye contact, let alone a cup of tea, must be avoided.

Bunting condemns the political dimensions of needlessly imposed austerity policies, with their disastrous outcomes for care. Very academic, Bunting looks at several different elements of care from historical and legislative perspectives, bringing into stark light the abysmal support that this area of society receives.The state responds by tightening the criteria for the provision of care, and providers by holding down costs and cutting wages. Personal contact is constantly squeezed by the market mechanisms of “efficiency” and financial accountability. I most valued the general information in Bunting’s introduction and in between her interviews, while I found that the bulk of the book alternated between dry statistics and page after page of interview transcripts. A further dimension of the health and social care crisis Bunting explores in her book relates to its commercialisation. We use cookies on this site to understand how you use our content, and to give you the best browsing experience.

The idea that the UK is in the midst of a ‘ care crisis’ is both a commonplace of British politics and seemingly impervious to solution.Austerity policies have culled social services and cut funding to the bone; shortages in the care workforce have reached critical proportions. It seems tied up in Bunting’s fight for well-resourced health and social services is the very struggle for recognition that disabled, sick and elderly people have a right to exist in warranting such costs. Everyone should read this book: anyone in government who's in a position to take action, and the rest of us whose votes they need to keep them in government. I would have preferred to read chapters as narratives supported by her essays: she clearly spoke to and heard from a lot of interesting people and I would have liked to have heard more about them.