Caring for Citizenship

Abstract

Official articulations of caring are socially constructed by their emergence from particular contexts. As a consequence, the political positioning of caring has the potential to vary in accordance with changes in welfare regimes. In Britain, a paradigm shift has occurred. In the social democratic welfare state, caring was a taken-for-granted resource to which social services were added. Following the community care reforms of the early 1990s, caring is the core resource and is seen as requiring management by social workers. Caring arrangements in households are actively identified, publicly negotiated, carefully organized and subject to formal agreements about the scope and nature of the care provided, often with the goal of averting service provision. This paradigm shift was an integral component in the formulation of the community care reforms by the New Right. It emerged from a concept of citizenship in which dependency was to be avoided and support by informal carers came to the fore. New Labour has consolidated the shift and refined its ideological basis. Caring is an expression of citizenship obligation.