Yet in a modern, industrialised society like ours, with an increasing population, it must often be paid for and given to us by those we do not know.īunting believes, as do her interviewees, that the urge to care is innate in human beings. Care, in other words, is often beyond price. It is not always about action it is often wordless. Listening, her interviewees say, is nine-tenths of the job. The testimonies she gathers constantly confirm what is meant by “good” care. She volunteered for short stints in care homes and spent time in hospices. She sat in on staff meetings and GP consultations she talked to charity workers, to parents of disabled children, to those running small businesses in the care industry, and to agency and in-home care workers. Over five years the author shadowed care workers, nurses and doctors across the public and the private sectors, in health care and what is known as “social care”. Labours of Love combines the techniques of social investigation – Bunting was formerly a Guardian journalist – with a deeply felt ethical inquiry. With the advent of the coronavirus, its eloquent plea for change has become even more urgent. She meant it as a warning in the face of “a crisis of unprecedented proportions” in the provision of health and social care across the UK. It is neither, though it is angry and very moving. Madeleine Bunting’s book could easily have become either a furious polemic or a vale of tears. These essential, existential questions are at the heart of Labours of Love.
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