How we start to respect those that care

This piece appears in the latest edition of the UCL Policy Lab magazine. To find out more about Policy Lab and get the latest news events, sign up for their newsletter here. The Respect Agenda report here. 

Towards the end, there were times when my dad would hold his hand. My grandfather was strong. He’d worked physical jobs his entire life. He’d lugged boxes, machinery, and produce. Into the back of vans, onto trailers, and off conveyor belts.

Yet in those final months, he was thin, robbed of the great weight that had carried so much. In our beginnings and our endings, life becomes mostly a physical activity. As infants, we are held, rocked and cradled. We’re bathed and cared for. And in the end, we are once again returned to the caring hands of others.

I have written many articles for the Policy Lab magazine. Working with our amazing researchers and a broad policy community, they touch on a whole range of policy areas. And the Lab’s role in connecting the real human struggles facing individuals and communities with the understanding and ideas of those whom we convene in conversation.

Yet when I think of care – of the value it brings and the respect it deserves I don’t think of complex reports or technical policy solutions. I think of those who cared for my grandparents: my parents, my aunts, my uncles, my family, and the carers who may as well have been family.

All of them, in their own way, went above and beyond to provide two people dignity and love in their final years. Our family’s story is not unique or unusual. The patchworking of paid and unpaid care is woven into communities across the UK. As we live longer, we will encounter its many loving but fraying threads.

It all forms a part of what we call the caring economy.

This ‘economy’ depends on deep and developed care networks between families, carers, paid care and community support. It is a genuine example of what UCL researchers like Dan Honig and Marc Stears have called a “relational” model of public service delivery – one which runs on collaboration and understanding between formal and informal networks.

John Perryman from Carers UK has been working alongside colleagues to help map the hidden army of carers who sustain a big part of the caring economy. And it’s clear about the contribution unpaid care makes to the nation.

“Unpaid care work has huge economic value. It contributes billions to the economy and ensures we can sustain vital public services such as the NHS” says John.

As John makes clear, if the millions of unpaid carers quit out of exhaustion or economic cost to themselves, the problems we see in our health service would seem minor to the tsunami of patients seeking alternative care. The NHS would be forced to take the burden.

Yet, of course, it’s not just unpaid care that makes up the caring economy. Adult social care workers comprise over 1.52 million employees, more than the NHS workforce. It is gendered, with women making up the bulk of the workforce. This workforce operates in every constituency in every nation of the UK.

What is most striking about those working in the caring economy is just how disrespected they feel by a system which does not fully recognise their contribution.

As I speak to Maureen, just one of the many care workers who made sure our family was able to manage providing care for two people we loved so dearly put it, they value the work they do, but it can feel like the system and politics doesn’t.

“We don’t even get guaranteed hours. Not properly, I won’t know if I’m working Christmas day until weeks before. They don’t seem to respect that we might have lives to live, plans to make or people to see.”

Like so many care workers you speak to - Maureen wouldn’t do any other job. She’s proud of the care she provides and what it brings to those she looks after.

“Don’t get me wrong I could quit and stack shelves for more than I earn being a care worker. But every day I know what I do matters.”

And this sense that care work is not respected goes for unpaid carers too. As John Perryman points out:

“The first thing that carers continually raise with us is how little recognised and valued they feel.”

Changes in the care sector could only partially account for the contribution of care workers and carers. But it could go some way to tackling, what UCL Policy Lab Director Marc calls “The crisis of respect”.

Elsewhere in this edition of the magazine, Marc Stears makes the case that politics still needs to respect those it seeks to serve.

“The first thing to do is turn our crisis of respect around, starting, most simply, with people feeling that they are being acknowledged and taken seriously. Seen. Heard. Valued. Considered as partners in finding solutions, not just beneficiaries awaiting the support of those with their hands on the wheel.”

To recognise and value the caring economy is to make visible what is seemingly invisible to politics and policy. For example, when politics talks of economic value and sustained growth, thoughts turn to high-vis jackets and assembly lines.

And while these jobs will play a critical role in a nation’s drive for living standards and productivity, they will never capture the entirety of a nation’s economic story. Whatever the UK or any major developed nation does with its economy, a significant chunk of the population will continue to work within the caring economy.

As Xiaowei Xu, Senior Economist at the IFS and UCL doctoral student in economics, points out, if the UK is to build a productive and growing economy, alongside driving innovation and investment, it must work to improve the lives of those working in sectors such as care.

“Social care is an enormous part of our economy. Over 800,000 people work as carers in the UK today – 1 in 40 of all workers, or 1 in 15 women without a university degree. Care work has been one of the fastest growing occupations over the past 30 years, and it will only continue to grow in importance as the population ages. Improving pay and conditions is going to be vital to boosting living standards, especially for less advantaged groups, as well as to addressing the recruitment and retention problems the sector faces.”

The economic case for a focus on the caring economy extends to those providing unpaid care. Work by Carers UK has demonstrated that many carers are dropping out of the labour market due to an inability to balance caring duties with their job.

“Our research shows that 600 people a day are having to leave work because of their caring responsibilities and a lack of support from both the social care system and their employers. Many don’t have the flexibility they need to juggle their care and full-time employment, which leads to negative outcomes for themselves, the employers they work for, and the wider economy”.

The economic case was so strong that the Carer’s Leave Bill (now the Carer’s Leave Act 2023), which sought to bring in some leave for carers, gained cross-party support. These changes may seem every day or insignificant to the global challanges we face – yet they provide us with a starting point in our politics, where we can begin to value, respect and support the caring economy.

Today if we are to build a more robust, resilient economy and society, we could start by building on the thoughtful and collaborative work of the caring economy. And make visible what is seemingly hidden.

Read The Respect Agenda report here.