Policy press

Gender balance in caring is heavily skewed towards women providing the majority of care. This is particularly evident in literature relating to intellectual disability. Using the platforms of mothering and disability to examine the literature, this article sheds light on the cultural norms and societal discourses that influence 'who cares' for children and adults with disabilities. It highlights that 'who cares' is often a socially constructed ideology that results in a reconstructed identity for women.

This article proposes a reimagining of the concept of carer respite. It explores the role of place in eliciting restorative experiences for carers and reconsiders the mechanism of 'respite as an outcome'. Findings from a Canadian-based study about dementia carers' experiences in their neighbourhoods illustrate that everyday places, whether in the home or in the social or built environment of the neighbourhood, facilitate their connections to themselves and others, leading to a sense of restoration.

Widespread injustice in care work means that sacrifice has not been a cherished norm in the ethics of care. Inge van Nistelrooij contests this thinking in her new book, where she contemplates how sacrifice might constitute care in valuable ways, and how it is a hermeneutically useful metaphor for conceptualising care.

In Imagining care: Responsibility, dependency, and Canadian literature, Amelia DeFalco explores the ways in which both fictional and personal-biographical Canadian narratives can enhance our understanding of the thorny issues associated with care – the dangers, liabilities and contradictions that often inhere in caregiving efforts and relations of care.

Engaging men and boys to do unpaid care work is key to achieving gender justice. This article argues that caregiving programmes with men can be effective and serve as an entry point to engage men as allies for feminist agendas. There is a need to increase the uptake and scale-up of such initiatives, while ensuring quality, local contextualisation and ownership, and full accountability to women and girls.

Participatory methodologies are frequently used in social research and have matured over the past decades. Ethical aspects of participatory research feature in retrospective accounts of partnerships that contribute to quality research, and those that were problematic to negotiate in the research partnership. Meanwhile, social researchers have shared concerns about meaningful transformations from research and the processes involved to achieve effective, responsive partnerships. As participatory methodologies have matured, so has an ethics of care.

Nussbaum's capabilities approach highlights the need for integrating vulnerability, dependency and care work with liberal principles of individuality and rationality. However, capabilities offer a statist, juridical and formal model of objectified care, whose adoption would lead to greater paternalism, especially in the context of public welfare institutions in India. This article argues that one needs to move beyond liberal theory, while engaging with vulnerability and care work in institutional contexts.

The purpose of this article is to examine the implications of care ethics in a Korean welfare state. It shows how Confucianism, developmentalism and neoliberalism can both promote and restrict the establishment of a Korean caring welfare state. Despite the fact that these Korean contexts can either support or undercut the development of a caring welfare state, it is clear that none of these contexts places particular importance on the value of care and care relationships.

The focus of the ‘3rd Transforming Care Conference’ was twofold: (1) tensions between policy and social innovation in care policies; and (2) pressures on the financial and social sustainability of care systems. The rationale for choosing these topics stems from the fact that care policies are rooted in dynamic and unstable financial and social environments, thereby necessitating responses to many long-term and intergenerational challenges.

Local government, service providers and community members are working together to make a difference in the lives of carers and those they care for in a community in Australia. Maroondah City Council is located 25 km east of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, at the foot of Mount Dandenong. Maroondah covers an area of 61 km² and has a population of about 112,300 people.