Re-Imagining Care – The Australia Cares Project

In this chapter, we present the work undertaken to reimagine care in society, through a particular project called “Australia Cares” led by the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney. During the COVID pandemic, care and caring took on an unusually high profile, not seen previously. Care work was critical to the survival of people – not just critical care work in health and formal care systems but also informal care in communities, as they supported each other during a time of crisis. In the United Kingdom, we saw nurses and other “frontline workers” being “clapped” by whole streets each week and the recognition of the work that these people did given unprecedented coverage in the media. But yet, the situation of many problems and challenges in the care economy remains unaddressed and despite the rhetoric during the pandemic, little has changed in the way that care is valued in society and the situation of care workers (formal and informal). We set out to expose many of these challenges in the Australia Cares project. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the project, the key findings and the issues as well as opportunities they raise for policy making/makers.