My mum’s carer was uncharacteristically late one morning. She didn’t want to say why at first, but it turned out she’d found her previous client – an elderly lady living all alone, with no family to visit – collapsed on the floor, barely alive. It was a lot to cope with for someone only in their early 20s, a reminder of the heavy responsibility this job carries. Watching the carers who helped both my parents in their respective final weeks taught me that while the work itself might seem mundane, the emotional and social skills needed to do it well – to coax some sense out of the confused, to jolly along the lonely, and to soothe the dying, to walk in and out of unfamiliar houses all day long without quite knowing what you might find – are anything but.
Yet like so many jobs predominantly done by women, care has long been relentlessly undervalued. That means lousy pay, little public recognition, and now – at least for the disproportionately large chunk of this workforce who are migrant workers – the disorientating realisation that the government can snap its fingers and all your life plans are upended overnight.
