Beyond breadwinners, caregivers, martyrs and burdens: a new framework for managing competing claims in care and support policy

Abstract

© 2017 Dr Yvette Maker

Using a case study of an Australian income support policy, Carer Payment (child), this thesis proposes a set of principles for designing care and support policy to advance the rights of multiple constituencies. The principles address two long-standing sources of tension in this field. The first is the tension identified by feminist social policy scholars between supporting women’s unpaid caring roles and supporting women’s participation in paid work. The second is the tension between the claims of carers for policy support and recognition on the basis of the burden of their caring roles, and disability rights claims for policies that afford choice, control and independence to people with disabilities. The case study demonstrates the tendency in Australian care and support policy to favour one activity (unpaid care or paid work), and one constituency (carers or people with disabilities) over the other.
 
 Scholars highlight the advantages and disadvantages for different constituencies of ‘either/or’ policy-making along these lines of fragmentation. Through a discourse analysis of documents relating to the most recent reforms to Carer Payment (child), the study explores the specific causes and consequences of this fragmentation in the Australian case. It highlights the dominant discourses of gender equality, care and disability that led to a policy that supports unpaid care for carers with ‘intense’ care loads (while assuming that all others can participate in paid work), and that prioritises the interests and claims of carers over those of their children. Unpaid care and paid work are assumed to be incompatible activities, parents (usually mothers) are expected to be responsible for providing the majority of care, and the care needs associated with normal childhood and disabled childhood are understood to be fundamentally different. The policy’s either/or approach meets some feminist and carer claims for the greater valuing and support of care, but it does so at the expense of both carers’ ability to participate in paid work, and the recognition of children’s distinct interests and choices.
 
 Some scholars have proposed ways to resolve these tensions and avoid the negative consequences of dichotomous policy approaches, mainly through proposing alternative ways of conceptualising and addressing gender equality, care and disability. However, these attempts have not fully resolved disagreements and inconsistencies between competing perspectives. Drawing on and extending previous academic efforts, I propose six principles for designing care and support policy that overcomes these limitations and addresses the concerns of multiple care and disability perspectives. Using a citizenship rights framework, the principles provide detailed guidance for formulating policies that afford equal care and support rights to people giving and/or using care or support. By applying the principles to the case study, I demonstrate their usefulness in designing policies that recast care, support and interdependence as core elements of social citizenship, place the interests and voices of all parties to care and support relationships on an equal footing, and offer greater flexibility and choice about care, support and paid work to all.

Open Access