Celia Briar, Elizabeth Liddell and Martin Tolich
– The purpose of this paper is to focus on care workers employed in clients’ own homes recognising the skills and responsibilities of home-based care workers.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on care workers employed in clients’ own homes recognising the skills and responsibilities of home-based care workers.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews and focus groups with domiciliary care workers in New Zealand centred on what these employees actually do during their working day.
Findings
Home-based care workers require the same skills as residential care workers, but they also have greater responsibilities and receive less supervision and support, as they work largely in isolation. In addition, they must spend a large part of their working day travelling between clients: this time is unpaid, and brings their average hourly pay below the minimum wage.
Practical implications
Although the home-based care workers who took part in this project love and are committed to making a positive difference to their clients, they also want the government, employers and the public to recognise their skills, efforts and their challenging working conditions.
Originality/value
In earlier days of deinstitutionalisation, Graham described caring work as a “labour of love”. More than three decades years later, a New Zealand government minister described paid care workers as working partly “for love”. Care work is also currently perceived as unskilled. Both these perceptions depress the pay and working conditions of care staff, and in future may undermine the quality of care delivered to vulnerable clients.
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Details
Keywords
Agricultural production in Honduras was devastated by the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota in November 2020, placing people depending on agriculture in a vulnerable and food…
Abstract
Agricultural production in Honduras was devastated by the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota in November 2020, placing people depending on agriculture in a vulnerable and food insecure situation. In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn in the country, these extreme events are forcing more people to leave and head to North America in migrant caravans. Over the last decades, Honduras has been impacted by severe climate change events, including droughts and extreme tropical storms. According to the Global Climate Risk Index (CRI), developed by Germanwatch (Eckstein et al., 2019), Honduras was the second most affected country by climate change over a period of 20 years, from 1998 to 2017. Extreme rainfall and tropical storms, droughts, variation in rainfall patterns, and soil loss make agriculture more difficult, thus placing low-income rural families at the edge of hunger and food insecurity. In terms of migration policy, much focus has been given to economic instability, weak governance, violence and crime as push factors for migration, but the effect of food insecurity and climate change impact is often overlooked in this narrative. Agricultural areas in Honduras, traditionally the backbone of food production, have been identified as climate out-migration hotspots. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the most relevant data to understand the interactions between climate change, food insecurity and the current migration crisis in Honduras.