Health care support workers (HSWs) play a fundamental role in international health care systems, and yet they remain largely invisible. Despite this, the number of HSWs is growing fast as governments strive to combat illness and address social care issues in a world of finite resources.
This original collection analyses the global experience of HSWs in the UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Portugal, Sweden and The Netherlands. Leading academics examine issues including the interface of HSWs with the health professions, regulatory practice risks, employment challenges and the dilemmas of an ageing population. Crucial future policy recommendations are also made for a world becoming increasingly dependent on HSWs.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can’t be fixed. Instead of helping to address our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people’s life chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems. This book provides an analysis of AI’s deep learning technology and its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity to the rise of the far right.
Dan McQuillan calls for us to resist AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good over algorithmic optimisation. He sets out an anti-fascist approach to AI that replaces exclusions with caring, proposes people’s councils as a way to restructure AI through mutual aid and outlines new mechanisms that would adapt to changing times by supporting collective freedom.
Academically rigorous, yet accessible to a socially engaged readership, this unique book will be of interest to all who wish to challenge the social logic of AI by reasserting the importance of the common good.
Does ‘real’ poverty still exist in Britain? How do people differentiate between the supposed ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor? Is there a culture of worklessness passed down from generation to generation? Bringing together historical and contemporary material, Poverty Propaganda: Exploring the myths sheds new light on how poverty is understood in contemporary Britain.
The book debunks many popular myths and misconceptions about poverty and its prevalence, causes and consequences. In particular, it highlights the role of ‘poverty propaganda’ in sustaining class divides in perpetuating poverty and disadvantage in contemporary Britain.
Poverty is not a neutral phenomenon, nor are social inclusion programmes neutrally conceived, designed and implemented.Their ultimate nature is built upon ideas, values, actors, politics and economic constraints.This topical book is one of the first to examine the social and political construction of anti-poverty programmes in Central Eastern Europe and their transformation from communist rule to the current economic crisis. It covers the approach towards the ‘parasite’ poor through to Guaranteed Minimum Income Schemes and illustrates how the distinction between different categories of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor has evolved over the years as the result of changing paradigms, combined with the pressure exerted by domestic and international actors, the European Union and the World Bank among others. This text breaks new ground for social policy students and scholars interested in understanding how differently post-communist welfare states have represented, legitimised and dealt with poverty, need and social justice in accordance with divergent normative frameworks constructed at national level.
this need is satisfied by the free labour we unknowingly provide online, for example by tagging our friends in photos on social media, but the bulk of the work is carried out by a poorly paid and largely invisible workforce. This has been the case since the beginning of computation; as Simon Schaffer writes about the nineteenth-century calculating machines: ‘To make machines look intelligent it was necessary that the sources of their power, the labour force which surrounded and ran them, be rendered invisible’ ( Schaffer, 1994 ). AI as we now know it depends on
://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/libraryResearch/2019/2019-04-02_spotlight-mind-the-care-gap-exposing-the-health-system-s-vulnerability-to-the-gap-between-family-care-provision-and-anticipated-demand_en.pdf . Phillips , D. , Paul , G. , Fahy , M. , Dowling-Hetherington , L. , Kroll , T. , Moloney , B. , Duffy , C. , Fealy , G. and Lafferty , A. ( 2020 ) The invisible workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic: family carers at the frontline , HRB Open Research , 3 ( 24 ): 1 – 11 . doi: 10.12688/hrbopenres.13059.1 Pickard , L. , Brimblecombe , N. , King , D. and Knapp , M. ( 2018
. and Lafferty , A. ( 2020 ) The invisible workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic: family carers at the frontline , Health Research Board Open Research , 3 ( 24 ): 1 – 11 , https://hrbopenresearch.org/articles/3-24/v1 . Plummer , C. ( 2012 ) Who Cares? An Exploration, Using Q Methodology, of Young Carers and Professionals’ Viewpoints , PhD thesis , UK : University of Sheffield , https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2685/2/Who_Cares_Thesis_FINAL.pdf . Pollock , D. , Davies , E.J. , Peters , D.J.M. , Tricco , A. , Alexander , L. , McInerney , P
.schres.2005.05.006 Phillips , D. , Paul , G. , Fahy , M. , Dowling-Hetherington , L. , Kroll , T. , Moloney , B. , Duffy , C. , Fealy , G. and Lafferty , A. ( 2020 ) The invisible workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic: family carers at the frontline , Health Research Board Open Research , 3 : 24 – 24 . doi: 10.12688/hrbopenres.13059.1 Pinquart , M. and Sörensen , S. ( 2003 ) Differences between caregivers and noncaregivers in psychological health and physical health: a meta-analysis , Psychol Aging , 18 ( 2 ): 250 – 67 . doi: 10
of a self-conscious and cohesive class as envisaged by some neo-Marxists. The chapter concludes by discussing the various policy implications that arise from this analysis. Chapter three by Paul Williams and Janet Lum on ‘Unpaid informal carers: The “shadow” workforce in health care’ is a reminder that, in considering an invisible workforce in health care, we also need to factor in the vast army of unpaid, little trained and largely unregulated informal carers – alongside the ranks of health support workers. Both have been neglected in the focus of much of the
markets and ‘poor work’ 74 Poverty propaganda and public spaces are clean and pleasant to use. (EHRC, 2014, p 6) Referring to a ‘largely invisible workforce’, in which even the workers describe themselves and their work as ‘invisible’ and ‘the lowest of the low’ (EHRC, 2014, p 8), the report states that the sector is rife with discrimination and poor employment practices. It goes on to state that while there are some examples of very good practice, ‘many workers, however, do not have their employment rights upheld. They may be bullied or discriminated against by
