In December, a landmark ruling was made in the New Zealand Supreme Court. The ruling stated that two full-time family carers (parents of a disabled adult man) should be classed as “homeworkers” and as such be treated as employees entitled to employment protections including the minimum wage and holiday pay.

The ruling was rooted in the premise that if another person was coming into the home to undertake this labour it would be constituted as work.

New Zealand is already considering the implications of this ruling, naturally the first thought of many is its impact on budgets, what will this mean to funding for disabled people’s support, as in New Zealand just as in the UK many people are not eligible or denied support through existing eligibility criteria.

This focus on funding reminds me of the debate around equal pay claims by women workers; the discussion quickly moves to “but, how will we afford this?” as opposed to a capitalist unequal mindset got us to this place.

Reactions in the UK have been more existential, focusing on the idea of duty, familial responsibility and the idea of being an “employee of the state”. Others, the idea that unpaid care (family care) is not as straightforward as paid labour, we don’t enter into it with our eyes open but that it creeps up on you.

These two perspectives sit at either end of a spectrum that at its centre disregards society’s collective responsibility for care and the foundational importance care plays in enabling our lives. By seeing care as both solely the responsibility of the state, as an expense to the economy and something where duty trumps the need for people to be able to live well and have the resources they need to do so supports our capitalist-centred model of society.

For Care Full what the New Zealand ruling should spark is a conversation that starts with; our economy no longer serves us and how do we redesign it, so that it enables us all to live well, care for one another and ourselves.

If we take this starting point, it enables us to think more ambitiously how we enable those who undertake unpaid labour, support disabled people to live full lives and accept that care is foundational in our lives and cannot be the preserve of one policy space.