Community Care and the Family: A Case for Equal Opportunities?

Abstract

The concern of this article is to examine some of the unacknowledged consequences, for women in particular of community care as a way of coping with the needs of frail elderly and severely handicapped individuals who might otherwise be in residential care. It is argued that the primary care of these groups will fall increasingly on female relatives. Community care has increasingly been viewed as an auspicious policy option in the past decade and the election of a Conservative government in 1979 is unlikely to reverse that trend. But the enthusiasm with which the idea has been taken up has not always been matched by clear thinking about its likely consequences.