The electronic monitoring of care work—The redefinition of paid working time

摘要

This chapter explores the electronic monitoring (EM) of homecare in the context of the local authority commissioning process as defined by public sector budget cuts. It focusses upon the perceived function of the technology from the perspective of the supplier and commissioners and the experience of monitoring from the perspective of care providers and homecare workers themselves. This account embeds EM in the employment relationship. It considers the way that EM facilitates the commissioning of homecare work on the basis of ‘contact time’ only, reconfiguring paid and unpaid working time and redefining homecare workers’ labour in both quantitative and qualitative terms.