Care Giving and Employment: Policy Recognition of Care and Pathways to Labour Force Return

By Bettina Cass

Contemporary labour markets and the gendered relations of informal care giving in Australia set the context for this exploration of changes in income support policies that enable or constrain the "choices" which care-providers seek to make.

These may include: combining care giving and employment, withdrawing temporarily from the labour market; and making the transition to paid employment after care giving responsibilities for dependent or vulnerable family members cease. The paper focuses on the transition pathways taken by workforce and mature age people (predominantly women), who have been sole parents with dependent children, or low income parents in couple families or carers for vulnerable and dependent adults when their intensive care giving responsibilities cease. What are the factors that enable or constrain these transitions? These are significant policy issues for individual and family well-being through the lifecourse; for workplace relations and for overall labour force participation.

(Australian Bulletin of Labour; vol. 32, no. 3, 2006)