ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the changing role of the state, family and market in providing care for older people in Australia, as welfare ideals of universalism give way to both the familisation and marketisation of caring and care services. Since 2000, the balance of care for frail older people has changed from predominantly residential care to home-based care services and family care (defined here as help from adult children, mainly daughters). Use of privately purchased services has increased markedly during the same period. Market-oriented policies construct care users as consumers and care as a commodity to be bought and sold. This political imagery is overshadowed by the consumer who is assumed to be a self-interested individual embedded primarily in economic relationships. This contrasts with notions of elder care in social work, traditionally based on a care ethic and a care rationality, which are located in critical gender theory. This chapter argues for the reclaiming of a critical agenda based on anti-ageist challenges from the Carers’ Movement and disability activists, as well as critical research into the co-creation and co-production of person-centred care.
