After pushing care to the margins for too long, we think it deserves a transformative relaunch. That’s why we’ve started Care Full, a space to think more expansively about care in a new economy.

Compartmentalised care

Care has become transactional: a collection of fixed locations we are defined as being within, or not. Care Giver, Care Leaver, Care Provider, Care Home, Care Recipient, Care Worker and Unpaid Carer.

Basically, we put care into boxes; it is compartmentalised and monetised. Demanded by austerity and delivered by privatisation, collectively we’ve stopped thinking of it as intrinsically human and started to think of it as a product we buy and sell. 

So, it’s no wonder that for those of us who have a deeper relationship with care, our lives are hard. Care is squeezed to the edges, unable to co-exist within the norms of work and society.

Often, it’s when longer periods of care exist that it becomes more challenging. We might want to care for others, but the wider societal and economic systems place obstacles in our way. Meanwhile, in policy spheres the issues are no smaller. For years, the narrative has been dominated with conversations about care providers or nurseries, low pay, workforces and families struggling financially and emotionally.

And, so, this is where we have ended up; with care often spoken about as something that is “in crisis”. 

A more caring reality

But what if we reframed the role of care, moving beyond individualised burden and small policy changes, and towards something that views care much more expansively?

Rutger Bregman recognised the intrinsic humanness of kindness and centred it in his book Human Kind. We believe we need to do the same for care.

Just like kindness, care is all around us. It’s woven through our everyday lives. It’s the squeeze of a hand, the arm around a shoulder, a big bear hug. It’s the tissue proffered, the home made meal dropped round, the cup of sugar from a neighbour, the offered seat on the bus. And, it’s solidarity on a picket line, a weekly shop for a loved one, sitting in on a big appointment.

Some of us will experience deeper moments of care throughout our lives, whether through illness, disability, growing a family or growing older. But we are all united by needing care in our lives – be it for ourselves, for each other or for the world around us – to thrive.

Enter Care Full

Many have tried over the past few years to change things, whether it be acts of parliament, awareness raising weeks or changes to how services are provided and run. Yet, there is a flaw, these are fixes to a system that fundamentally doesn’t care. For those of us at the deep end of care, the system is still in the shallow end.

That’s where Care Full comes in. We want to start a conversation about a system shift. Our social and economic models need to change, fundamentally and deeply. They must centre care, value it, enable it so that all of us can live good lives as much as possible and these lives are not made harder by wider society and the economy we live in.

We’re going to start to explore what the system could look like and what needs to change for it to happen, alongside others.

If, like us, you’re tired of treading water, drop us an email and follow us for updates on what we’re doing next.