Care Giving and Employment: Policy Recognition of Care and Pathways to Labour Force Return‪.‬

Abstract Contemporary labour markets and the gendered relations of informal care giving in Australia set the context for this paper which explores changes in income support poficies that enable or constrain the 'choices' which care-providers seek to make. These may include: combining care giving and employment; withdrawing temporarily from the labour market; and making the transition to paid employment after care giving responsibilities for dependent or vulnerable family members cease. In particular, the paper explores the transition pathways taken by workforce and mature age people (predominantly women), who have been sole parents with dependent children, or low-income parents in couple families, or carers for vulnerable and dependent adults when their intensive care giving responsibilities cease. What are the factors which enable or constrain these employment transitions? These are very significant policy issues for individual and family well-being through the life-course; for workplace relations; and for overall levels of labour force participation in the context of a particularly risky life-course transition.