On "The Care Crisis" by Emma Dowling

Today I'm going to talk about the Care Crisis by Emma Dowling. It is a new release from Verso and the subtitle “is what caused it and how can we end it”. Overall it's a pretty good book. It does identify a lot of the problems with our caring organizations from the elderly all the way on down to the youth. I think the big problem for me with this book was that it was more focused on the British context. And they fund their care a little bit differently than we do here in America. But what we do have in common is that there is a lack of funding and support for the organization of the people who do care in both countries.

This of course is a little bit is a bit disappointing because I think there's an idea that the European system and model is a little bit better in terms of healthcare. But especially in the English context we've seen how neoliberalism has brought its Market upon everything.

The English have less distributed governments in terms of taxing. They have their local Council but they're reliant on getting grants from the central government and these grants have been cut over time so the organizations that are reliant on funding for them are just in trouble. Here in America I know personally I work for a caring organization and though we have multiple funding streams that complicate our financials if there is a cut from our funders we have other fullbacks. That's less so here in the context that Dowling describes. So what happens is there's less time and people are more stretched and people that need care either don't get it or it's at a substandard level.

When this book is at its strongest it is in describing the various problems we have with the caring organizations. It does fall off a little at the end, the last two chapters. The penultimate chapter is one that talks about self-care and it kind of feels like it's from left field and doesn't fit in with the rest of the book really. And then the final chapter is the inevitable what is to be done chapter and it just doesn't feel as if there is a way to push back against neoliberalism because it is working within that context and really the entire social system and economic system needs to be reformed and unfortunately I don’t think it's going to happen tomorrow. But overall it's a worthwhile read.