Marketisation and Cash-for-Care

Governments have increasingly adopted market mechanisms in public care systems since the 1980s. The ideas and ideologies behind marketisation are complex and, across care systems, diverse policy objectives and rationales drive marketisation strategies. Cash-for-care schemes marketise care by re-framing individual care users as care consumers and providing them with a funding allocation to purchase their care. This chapter canvasses some of the literature on marketisation and individualised care to provide a basis for appraising Australia’s new cash-for-care scheme for support for people with disability and its likely impacts on social care work and employment. A framework to guide the research is developed, drawing on insights from the three theoretical traditions of feminist socioeconomics, comparative institutionalist approaches and labour segmentation theory. Three aspects of care and employment regimes are identified as particularly important for shaping work and employment for care workers in cash-for-care schemes.