The care work sector is widely acknowledged to be facing a crisis of recruitment and retention, while long-held assumptions and gender biases of informal care are being shifted. This book considers the current situation of care work and care workers, from childcare to eldercare, and from family carers to paid carers. It examines the composition of the current workforce (more than a million in the UK alone), the knowledge and education needed for care work, and the significance of where care work is undertaken (in the home, in institutions). It also looks back, to show how understandings of care work are historically situated. The authors examine in depth a number of groups of care workers at different points on the continuum from informal to formal - from relatives caring for family members to the highly professional social pedagogue, a key care worker in Northern Europe. Considering potential challenges and scenarios, the book poses big questions about the future of care work - offering some possible answers.
Wide ranging and innovative, "Care Work: Present and Future" will be of great interest to academic and policy audiences, and managers or practitioners working in health, social care, childcare, youth work and social policy.