Paid Care in Australia

About the editors:Debra King is an associate professor of sociology at Flinders University.Gabrielle Meagher is a professor of social policy at Macquarie University.

• About the authorsPreface and acknowledgementsIntroduction: politics, profits and practices in child and aged careDebra King and Gabrielle Meagher The political economy of for-profit paid care: theory and evidenceGabrielle Meagher and Natasha Cortis For-profit organisations in managed markets for human servicesBob Davidson Outsourcing of elder care services in Sweden: effects on work environment and political legitmacyRolf Å. Gustafsson and Marta Szebehely Caring for profit? The impact of for-profit providers on the quality of employment in paid careDebra King and Bill Martin Blurred boundaries: how paid careworkers and care managers negotiate work relationshipsJane Mears Parents as consumers of early childhood education and care: the feasibility of demand-led improvements to qualityJennifer Sumsion and Joy Goodfellow Improving quality in Australian child care: the role of the media and non-profit providersBronwen Dalton and Rachel Wilson The giant in the playground: investigating the reach and implications of the corporatisation of child care provisionFrances Press and Christine Woodrow

'The editors of Paid Care in Australia: Politics, Profits, Practices set out an ambitious agenda: to explore in‐depth the processes and consequences of the shift to for‐profit provision of social care. The text focuses primarily on Australia, though in several of the chapters, the authors make comparisons to similarly situated highly industrialised countries, specifically the United States and Sweden. The editors substantially achieve their goal in this timely and thorough examination.'