‘I don’t think they were clapping for me’. Home care workers during the covid-19 pandemic.

This chapter explores the ways in which the pandemic and Brexit have exposed and intensified long term crises within social care provision in England. I focus on home care workers who provide care to older, disabled and chronically ill people in their own homes. First, I examine how gender, class and race hierarchies have been historically embedded within home care work, reproducing it as a low status, low wage occupation within post World War Two welfare capitalism in the UK. I then focus on a case study of home care workers in southern England during 2020-2021, examining the impact of the pandemic emergency on their working conditions and experiences.