In setting up the ESRC Centre for Care and developing our detailed programme of work, we draw inspiration from our partners, our Voice Forum members and our Advisory Board. They give our research teams vital insights into how care is experienced by people living daily with the realities of care and support in the UK, and about changes in arrangements for care both here and around the world.
We aim to share these insights widely, enabling diverse perspectives to inform public debate and policymaking about care. To enable this, our website will regularly feature contributions and publications that draw on evidence about care to inform positive change.
In March 2022, Eurocarers – whose Executive Director Stecy Yghemonos is on the Centre for Care Advisory Board – released its response to a Call for Evidence for the European Care Strategy. This sets out Eurocarers’ vision for care as a ‘comprehensive and multidisciplinary sector, rooted in human rights, choice and dignity’. It offers a concise and informative summary of key issues highly relevant to developments in the UK too. It touches on conceptual issues and on the need to improve data – matters central to our work in the Centre for Care – and discusses policy aims in the context of the realities of life for people with care and support needs and those who assist them in diverse settings.
Although the UK is no longer part of the EU, the vision Eurocarers sets out offers important ideas, evidence and challenges that are very relevant to ongoing UK policy and public debate. Representing the perspectives of carers’ organisations in 27 European countries, it also resonates with topics central to the Centre for Care’s work on the care ecosystem and digital care, on the importance of a life course approach, on the growing relevance of migration and mobility, and on the care workforce and inequalities in care.
You can read the full Eurocarers’ contribution here. It’s a stimulating and inspiring read!