Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care

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Personal contact is constantly squeezed by the market mechanisms of “efficiency” and financial accountability. Hence the importance of Bunting's interviews in the heartlands of care, which often capture the elusive blend of attentive kindness that we know, intuitively, should be the essence of care.

Economist Adam Smith’s self-interested market actor is free from childcare restraints, his behavior governed by rational cost-benefit calculation. The state responds by tightening the criteria for the provision of care, and providers by holding down costs and cutting wages.Sometimes, it is the main criteria by which care work is assessed and inspected, creating a cycle of behaviour which prioritises bureaucracy over people. In this remarkable and compassionate book, Madeleine Bunting speaks to those on the front line of the care crisis, struggling to hold together a crumbling infrastructure. This is the spirit that corporations exploit, leaving carers routinely battling poverty and exhausted by overwork. This in-depth look at the care sector reveals the harm being done as bureaucracy takes precedence over humanity. Dip Into NEW PAPERBACKS [jsb_filter_by_tags count="15" show_more="10" sort_by="total_products"/] A selection of recent paperbacks.

Used to the NHS, I found the process of browsing for a healthcare provider as if it was car insurance unsettling when I first moved here.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. We are very proud and committed to our model of care,” he says, “and feel it is not well understood.

Modern nursing was invented by Florence Nightingale, a brilliant polymath and an expert in statistics, management, hygiene and communication.They are agonised by the knowledge that they live in a society so uncaring, even cruel, towards their child. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in care and, as she shows, we probably all should be. At times I had to put it down to wipe away tears, at times as I was angry and again reflective and thoughtful. By autumn's second peak, there was little clapping, just mounting anxiety over all the ways government policies had failed us. Missing as well is any concern with the environment, and the need to care not just for each other, but for the world itself—all issues highlighted in The Care Manifesto, which I co-authored as part of The Care Collective (and reviewed in the previous issue of PQ).