Who Cares? Rebuilding Care in the Post-Pandemic World

The challenge

This project seeks to uncover and understand the matrix of care provision that is fragmented and uncoordinated, and the resultant overlapping, inconsistent and at times competing policies and regulations shaping care work and its provision at different levels of governance. Rebuilding a robust and more resilient care organization requires a comprehensive understanding of the care economy and entails learning from innovative initiatives in different countries.

Comparisons will proceed along four main axes:

• The impact of the pandemic on needs and modalities of care provision; 
• Labour conditions and rights of paid care workers; 
• Care as a strategic dimension and pillar for public policies;
• Caring strategies when the state fails and coping strategies for vulnerable communities.

The pandemic has created a paradox: while care work has never been so visible, it has also never been so precarious and vulnerable, thus leading to a global “care crisis”. The impact of this crisis on women in particular, as receivers and providers of care, has been very debated, yet, no solutions or concrete improvements in care workers’ conditions have been implemented so far.

Expected impact

The UK team coordinates Axis 2: Labour conditions and rights of paid care workers. We aim to understand the potential impact of COVID-19 on the labour conditions and health of care workers in the six countries of the consortium, and in particular, to assess what level of exploitation can be attributed to the pandemic. What is new and what was already there in this precarious sector of activity? The specific objectives are:

• To investigate the labour conditions and rights of care workers before and during the pandemic.
• To assess the overall health and exposure to occupational hazards of care workers in and post-pandemic.
• To understand whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted care workers’ labour conditions and health.

Funding details

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – £310,000 for UCL (over £1,000,000 in total)

Project duration

2022–2025

Project team

Principal Investigator – Dr Louisa Acciari, UCL Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction (RDR)

Project coordinator/co-applicants/key people:

• Dr Sabah Boufkhed, University of Manchester
• Jessica Roberts, UCL RDR Centre for Gender and Disaster

In other countries:

Lead Principal Investigator – Nadya Araujo Guimarães, Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning and University of São Paulo, Brazil

Country Principal Investigators:

• Angelo Soares, University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada
• Javier Armando Pineda Duque, University of the Andes, Colombia
• Aurélie Damamme, Paris 8 University, France
• Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University, USA

More information

• Project website

Image: FENATRAD, reproduced with permission