5: Do we care enough? – with Madeleine Bunting and Professor Dame Anne Marie Rafferty

The Health Foundation podcast

We all need care at some point in our lives – when we’re young, when we’re ill and when we grow older. And caring calls for many of the qualities at the very core of what it is to be human: empathy, compassion, selflessness and commitment.

And yet care is so often undervalued, skimped on, commoditised or ignored. Examples of that indifference are everywhere: at home, in the NHS and in social care. And just at a time when the need for care is growing fast, many commentators feel that we have is a ‘crisis of care’.

Why is that? And what can be done about it?

In the latest episode of our podcast, our Chief Executive Jennifer Dixon discusses this issue with:

• Madeleine Bunting – prizewinning author, broadcaster, and former Guardian journalist. In 2020, she released the book Labours of love: The crisis of care
• Professor Dame Anne Marie Rafferty – Professor of Nursing Policy, King’s College London, and currently President of the Royal College of Nursing.

Useful links:

• Labours of love: The crisis of care
• Listen to Jeremy Hunt's comments on care in our first podcast episode
• Find out more about the Health Foundation podcast