Narrow Choices and Unheard Voices
from Part III - Care and Support Policy Tensions in Two Liberal Welfare States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2022
This chapter examines how Australia’s Carer Payment (child) policy treats the activities and constituencies of interest in this book and highlights the discourses and norms of care, disability and paid work that underpin this treatment. The policy has limited benefits and many shortcomings for both carers and children with disabilities. Its availability to some carers with the most ‘intense’ care loads does place economic value on the traditionally undervalued activity of care but reinforces the full-time caring role and provides inadequate support for alternatives. Consequently, many of the ‘burdens’ identified by carers are ignored and perhaps exacerbated. Carer Payment (child) treats unpaid care and paid work as largely incompatible activities and does not problematize the unequal gender division of labor or address its consequences for women. Carers’ eligibility assessments are focused on the individual, medical needs of the child, and carers are assumed to be the best people to meet those needs. As a result, the views and preferences of children with disabilities are not sought or expressed, and their broader rights are not considered.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.