This book explores the critical issue of how to manage the ever-increasing demand for social care in Britain’s ageing society. With informal care from family members and friends now the dominant form of adult social care in the UK, this precarious system is struggling to provide enough support.

Exploring the relationship between formal and informal care, this book develops ideas for a ‘caring economy’, showing the potential to integrate paid-for and unpaid care within a framework of solidarity based on the strengths of the community, working to improve the quality and quantity of state-funded care provision while sharing unpaid support more widely as a community responsibility.