UK’s neoliberal care sector neglect and policy blind spots fueled Covid’s deadly spread in elderly institutions—echoing global austerity crises
Original framing: “UK government failures led to Covid spreading ‘like wildfire’ in care homes, inquiry finds” — The Guardian - World
Care workers—70% of whom are women of colour—have repeatedly warned of unsafe conditions, but their strikes (e.g., 2020’s *Black Lives Matter*-linked walkouts) were ignored. Racialised labour in care is a global pattern: in the US, Black women make up 58% of home health aides but earn 20% less than white counterparts. The inquiry’s framing erases how austerity and racial capitalism created the conditions for this catastrophe. A marginalised lens would centre their demands for unionisation, fair pay, and safety as non-negotiable.
The UK’s care home Covid disaster was not an accident but the logical outcome of three interlocking systems: (1) **Neoliberal austerity**, which treated care as a cost centre not a public good; (2) **Racial capitalism**, where care work—performed overwhelmingly by migrant and racialised women—was systematically undervalued; and (3) **Colonial legacies**, where ‘care’ is outsourced to the least powerful while ‘health’ remains a state privilege.
The inquiry’s focus on ‘oversight’ obscures how these structures were *designed* to fail: private equity firms profited from ownership, governments slashed public health budgets, and care workers—who knew the risks—were ignored when they spoke up. Solutions must dismantle these systems by centring Indigenous relational models, unionised worker co-ops, and reparative justice for marginalised labour. The trickster here is the myth of ‘efficiency’—a story told to justify abandoning the vulnerable, while countries like Japan and South Korea prove that care crises are political choices, not inevitabilities.