I got in from my homecare shift last night to a message from my sister asking if I had seen what the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, had said about care workers. A quick Google and I found it. This is what he said in his speech at the Labour Party Conference:
"My sister was a care worker in the pandemic. She’s still a care worker. Work that surely we know by now is so important for the future of this country.
So Conference, wouldn’t it be great if this was also a country, where because of that contribution, that vital, life-affirming work, she could walk into any room and instantly command the same respect as the Prime Minister?"
This made me smile. I know, it says nothing about actual policy, but the sentiment of Starmer's words conveys something significant about how care workers should be - but currently are not - perceived by society at large.
Women's work, dirty work, entry-level-&-low-paid-therefore-must-be-unskilled work. Disrespected work. This social construction of care work is responsible for so much harm over so many years. It all stems from the fact that paid care work developed out of unpaid domestic work performed by women. Meanwhile, our systemic under-representation as a result of the sector's marketisation feeds into this social construction, by making it seem that we are unable to speak to our own interests. Of course we able to; we just haven't had the mechanisms (or time) to do so.
Such negative social constructions of care workers explain why the sector's proposed solutions to its problems so often revolve around the need to train care workers: extra training, different training, something to train the issues out of the individual worker who must not understand what they should be doing differently, otherwise quality of care would be so much better...(nothing to do with our employment conditions!).
Earlier this year, I wrote a dissertation about perceptions of care workers and the extent to which this influences the policy environment around social care. I interviewed care workers about their experiences as part of this. From this academic work, from my own experiences as a care worker, and from the wealth of insights I have gained through running this support network for homecare workers, I can confidently say that there remains a serious issue around basic disrespect for 'frontline' care workers.
Of course, this is not universal: many of the individuals I support and their families are incredibly appreciative of our efforts, but often this is communicated with an air of surprise: they did not realise what care workers actually do, suggesting they might have thought differently about us before they had no choice but to draw on social care. At an event, on mentioning that I was a care worker, an individual who draws on social care simply replied: 'I hate care workers'. On a number of occasions, well-meaning individuals from within the social care sector have recommended that I look into 'support worker' roles instead of care. Yet I have no issue with the nature of the work I already do: I love it, personal care is not a big deal, and I just wish to see things organised better. If all care workers looked for support worker roles, where would that leave us? It seems to me that the snobbery about care work might run deeper than meets the eye...
The care workers I have worked alongside over the past seven years have generally been the most competent, mature and reliable people I have ever met, regularly giving their time unpaid to help people where the cost of care / lack of state-funding means their visits are simply not long enough. It is refreshing to see the new government framing care workers in a light that is reflective of the true commitment and professionalism our work involves.
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