Duty of Care interrogates the definition of ‘domiciliary care’ currently employed in the United Kingdom – as providing paid assistance for clients with everyday tasks and promoting independence. To support individuals in their own homes, however, can often be a demanding and emotional task, requiring a multitude of (unseen) labour processes. These are normalised and/or unacknowledged by employers, clients, even care-workers themselves, and are reinforced in Health and Social Care discourses.
This series aims to encapsulate the occluded parts of domiciliary care in ints affective-discursive materiality, by visually eliciting the narratives of domiciliary care workers themselves.
Duty of Care invites the viewer to consider what it means to care in an individualist, capital-driven society. To what extent would you go to ensure a stranger’s comfort, and under what conditions? When does a client become a friend? What happens, in turn, when one becomes familiar and emotionally invested? Where does your duty of care end?
