The Ethics of Care and the Newfoundland Paid Family Caregiver Program: An Assessment

The ethics of care has gained traction as a feminist normative lens from which to examine policies and policy issues. This thesis aims to contribute to this growing literature by employing a critical ethics of care lens to assess a new long-term care initiative in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. This initiative, called the Newfoundland Paid Family Caregiver Program, allows eligible participants to pay family members for care services. This analysis uncovers numerous tensions, both practical and theoretical, related to the way this program (re)organizes care. Specifically, the ways in which this program downloads caring responsibilities onto the family and monetizes caring relations is discussed. Finally, this analysis explores what care policies starting from the premises of a critical ethics of care might look like, and argues that such policies would have greater reach and positive consequences in terms of (re)producing healthy, flourishing lives for us all.