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This chapter discusses the care experiences of a group of parents and a grandparent working at a Higher Education Institution in England and homeschooling during the pandemic. The group established an informal, work-based, online peer support group during and beyond the first COVID-19 lockdown. This chapter analyses a survey of group members and the group's online chat data to explore experiences of homeschooling and participating in the group. It represents a pioneering case study in how a group of parent-workers coped with the conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the group was underpinned by an ethic of care, based on reciprocal care relationships. The group developed ways of caring together and sought to influence and create more caring working practices and cultures. Whilst it is possible to create small pockets of more inclusive, supportive and caring spaces within education workplaces, we conclude that the challenge to create supportive family-friendly working environments remains.

Managing public ‘affect’ was a critical component of Aotearoa New Zealand's COVID-19 policy approach, which was predicated on collective emotional feelings of calmness, compassion and trust. A long history of health promotion efforts have involved co-opting children as tools to manipulate (adult) public affect towards motivating behavioural change or accepting health interventions. Little research has yet considered the consequences of objectifying children for affect management in the name of public health. The Pandemic Generation study compared the perspectives of Auckland children aged 7–11, generated through co-drawing comics about their pandemic experience, with a critical discourse analysis of children's representation in New Zealand COVID-19 public health messaging. In this chapter, I argue that by leveraging performative care for children to manipulate an adult public affect, the New Zealand government erased children's subjectivities, their care-giving roles and contributions, further disenfranchising children as members of the ‘public’ in public health.

This article discusses the importance of the relationship between cultural awareness (CA) training and post-training reflection in the health-care sector, and considers the implications for future developments for CA training in relation to content, audience, process and format.

A total of 77 health and social care professionals (HCSPs) took part in a 4-h CA training, 25 of whom also opted for an additional optional reflection hour. The results reported on in this paper are drawn from the experiences of the 25 participants in the optional reflection sessions (RSs), using a thematic analysis approach.

Participants highly valued the “safe space” in both the CA workshop and the optional follow-on RS, enabling them to share experiences, revisit topics and feel supported to put things into practice. They also reported a growing confidence in dealing with intercultural challenges, in particular in asking questions and being curious about topics they did not understand.

This research points towards a strong recommendation for open-ended CA training, allowing participants to articulate their experiences, fears and concerns. It also highlights the importance of a follow-on RS as an integral part of CA training; both of these were found to offer opportunities for strengthening HSCPs’ skills and facilitate the transition of learning from the workshop context into the workplace, with the ultimate aim of reducing inequalities in the quality of patient care.