Issues with ‘decent work’ for many care workers is not news in the UK, but this is a moment during which change can be made. Social care workers in the UK are experiencing both higher public regard and increased pressures in the workplace. There is currently recognition that care workers and care work are undervalued and under-recognised, that care institutions have received too little investment.

Higher regard comes from being classed as ‘key workers’ and lauded for taking on the tough challenges in the ‘front line’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. The front line voice is potentially a major source of learning and change; though sensitivities about reputations amid critical perspectives on the levels of deaths in care homes is leading to reservations about speaking out.

From early interviews we are finding important things. The living wage has been awarded, but as yet the funding for that has not found its way into peoples pockets. Meantime we are perhaps hearing about and seeing a growing sense of closeness among workers and residents in care homes, forged in the challenging times and circumstances they have been through, might have a legacy of a greater appreciation and self-esteem among the workforce as a whole.

Increased pressures come with the significant personal health risks being experienced in many care settings (Douglas et al 2020; ONS 2020).

The context is one of the ongoing problematic nature of many care workers’ terms of employment – social care work is poorly paid, frequently part-time or on the basis of zero-hour contracts, and is often characterised by unpaid overtime and unpaid training time (e.g. Hayes 2017). A job in the care sector is no guarantee against poverty.

Building on Past Work; The UWS-Oxfam Partnership

The project builds on existing links and the joint work of the University of the West of Scotland and Oxfam Scotland, via the long-standing UWS-Oxfam Partnership. In January 2020 a Policy Forum event, entitled ‘Making Policy Care’, on the relationship between un/paid care work and poverty (UWS-Oxfam Partnership 2020). This event brought together anti-poverty campaigners, people with lived experience of being a (paid/unpaid) carer, those involved in care service delivery, and policy professionals.