Care workers are employed to provide support to children and disabled or frail older persons in home and institutional settings. Services for these groups are rapidly changing in many countries and so are the employment and working conditions for care workers. The conditions of  work affect not only the quality of the care that care workers are able to offer, but also the content and quality of the jobs in which they are employed. Working conditions in care work are themselves shaped by a wide range of national, local and workplace policies and practices that govern care as labour and care as a social service. Thus, working conditions in care work are an important focus for care research.
Papers that explore any aspect of the complex relationships between working conditions and the quality of care and jobs and/or working conditions in care and broader social and labour policies are welcome. In particular, we welcome papers with a comparative approach to care work across different sectors (care for children, disabled or older persons), different arenas (home based versus institutional; public versus private etc) or between countries, as well as papers that investigate the relationships between the organization of work, work content, working conditions and quality of care.
Stream convener
Marta Szebehely, Department of Social Work, Stockholm University, marta.szebehely@socarb.su.se