Individualising Risk

This book investigates how paid care work and employment are being transformed by policies of social care individualisation in the context of new gig economies of care. Drawing on a case study of the creation of a new individualised care market under Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme the book provides important insights into possible futures for social care employment where care is treated as an individual consumer service. Bringing together sociological, political science and socio-legal approaches the book demonstrates how, in individualised care markets and with ineffective labour laws, risks of business and employment are devolved to frontline care workers. The book argues for an urgent re-evaluation of current policy approaches to care and for new regulatory approaches to protect workers in diverse forms of employment.

• Gender and work
• Social Policy – personalisation
• Paid care work
• Employment - Working conditions
• Social care workforce
• National Disability Insurance Scheme

“MacDonald’s analysis is sobering, and her criticisms make good sense. The development of more specific normative claims for influencing policy, however, is traded for a more general petition … . The former, I presume, is a priority for future research.” (Anton Killin, Metascience, August 11, 2022)

This detailed account of the marketisation of social care in Australia provides a sharp analysis of the way in which narratives of cost reduction and consumer choice have worked to stymie the development of decent work for the disability care workforce. Fiona McDonald shows how the design and implementation of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme has failed to include adequate resources for the disability care workforce leaving them vulnerable to some of the lowest paid and insecure working conditions in

Australia. The book locates the care workforce at the centre of analysis to provide a critical account of how the interface between care policy and employment regulation produces the conditions of individualised risk for social care workers. McDonald concludes that a more collective approach to person-centred care based on organisation-based employment for care workers could ameliorate this risk, support high quality disability care support, gender equality, and a sustainable and equitable future of work.

 —Elizabeth Hill, Associate Professor, Department of Political Economy, The University of Sydney

“Macdonald’s top notch analysis decisively confirms that just when the world is in desperate need of consistent and high quality care,  gig work and cash-for-care models are propelling Australia and other countries into a further crisis of substandard, low quality jobs and care. Presenting clear and compelling evidence, Macdonald shows that the marketization of social care results in precarity and further undermines this highly feminized and insecure sector.”

– Donna Baines, Director and Professor of Social Work, University of British Columbia

This timely and sobering book shows how the marketisation of social care can go wrong. Fiona Macdonald analyses how Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme works to shift risk and responsibility to individual support workers at the frontline, to the detriment of the quality of care and support for many people with a disability. Macdonald establishes that labour regulation – or the lack of it – is as critical as social care policy for shaping how care systems work, and who benefits and loses within them. She also shows how the growing presence of digital platforms in organising disability support work, and their promotion by public authorities, are undermining the conditions for decent work in social care. With important lessons for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners across the full range of social care services, the book raises challenging questions about how social care systems can balance the rights of people who need care and support with the rights of people whose job it is to help them.

— Gabrielle Meagher, Professor Emerita, Macquarie University, Australia.

• RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

  Fiona Macdonald

Fiona Macdonald is a senior research fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research has centred on the impacts of changing labour markets and employment arrangements, combining ethnographic studies with regulatory and policy analyses.

Policies and ethics