‘Off My Own Back’: Precarity on the Frontlines of Care Work

Abstract

Hailed by some as representing the ‘most profound change in Australian disability history’, care work in the disability sector under the new National Disability Insurance Scheme is described by one frontline worker as ‘a massive swing towards a casual workforce and a massive cultural shock’. This firsthand account draws on 13 pages of unsolicited hand-written notes from a long-time, frontline care worker and his wife, as well as an in-depth interview and subsequent telephone and email conversations. The article gives voice to the experience of the frontline as disability workers grapple with almost complete casualization of their work, as the state retreats from its role in regulating employment and protecting workers in favour of the marketization of services and the advancing of the human rights of people with disabilities.