Hill, Trish

Social inclusion is a contested concept that identifies the basis for social membership and valued activities in any society. Within social inclusion assessments, care is often overlooked or perceived to be a risk factor for exclusion and a barrier to inclusion. Drawing on ideas from care theories, the authors argue that social inclusion needs revising to take account of care.

This rapid literature review was commissioned by NSW Family & Community Services on behalf of the NSW Carers Advisory Council. The review aims to contribute to the evidence to help the Council to better understand the social and emotional health and wellbeing of the carer population and the specific issues and their impact in the carer population.

This paper envisions children and young people who provide informal care to family members with illness or disability as active agents within the care relationship, whilst emphasising that this agency operates within constraints. These constraints include familial and kinship obligations, socio-economic and demographic circumstances and policy and service constraints. This paper examines the costs incurred and benefits conferred by young people who provide care. It presents the findings from an analysis of Australian national data on young people who provide informal care.

This paper provides information about what job characteristics promote or inhibit maintaining employment while caring. Using a nationally representative longitudinal data set—the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey—the paper traces the effects of the onset of care on labour force participation.

In Australia the policy balance has shifted away from institutional forms of health and aged care towards supporting people in their own homes. This change presupposes a significant and growing supply of informal caring labour. A large proportion of informal carers (40–60 per cent) currently combine paid employment with their caring responsibilities. Using the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, the paper examines the effect of caring on employment, hours worked and earnings. The analysis shows that working age carers experience disadvantage.