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7 - Care, Disability and Gender Equality in Australian Carers’ Income Support

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

Yvette Maker
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Care and Support Rights After Neoliberalism
Balancing Competing Claims Through Policy and Law
, pp. 150 - 170
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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