Reward
What’s the issue?
Care work, both paid and unpaid, has been historically undervalued, remaining poorly paid and often with inadequate social benefits, protections and working conditions. As women make up over 80% of the world’s 67 million domestic workers and 76% of care work is undertaken by women, particularly from migrant backgrounds and marginalised communities, the lack of valuing and undercompensation of care work disproportionately affects women negatively.
Local governments can reward paid care work and domestic work by ensuring fair wages and decent working conditions for all workers, including those in the informal economy. Offering professional development programs and certifications can enhance the quality of care jobs and ensure a safe and stimulating environment, while information sharing and special programs like cash transfers, can ensure even the most precarious and invisible caregivers are reached.
Local governments can play a key role in ensuring decent work by offering training, and certifications, through public employment programs and sharing of key resources, thus ensuring caregivers have fair work conditions, and improved financial stability.
Professionalization and certification
Local governments can create opportunities for professional growth and development of caregivers through training and upskilling programs. They can further establish pathways, in collaboration with community centres and educational institutions, to recognize foreign qualifications, enabling care workers from different countries to have their credentials validated locally. This fosters professionalization, ensuring that care workers are equipped with the necessary skills and that their expertise is acknowledged.
Institute ISMEK, Istanbul (Türkiye)
Under the Human Resources and Education Department, Lifelong Learning Branch Directorate, the Institute offers free vocational and technical training courses, as well as art, foreign language, music, computer technologies, and personal development. It includes education for vulnerable groups through collaborations with institutions such as prisons, nursing homes, and community mental health centres.
Public works programs
Public employment programs, often in collaboration with national governments, can account for caregivers’ needs by, for example, offering childcare services and flexible work hours, thus enabling caregivers to earn an income while managing their care responsibilities. These programs should combine income support with skills development initiatives, thus providing paid and unpaid workers the opportunity to upskill and break cycles of poverty.
Information and guidance centres
Set up local centres to provide caregivers with information, resources, and guidance on navigating professional opportunities and services related to caregiving. These centres should support workers in finding relevant job opportunities, accessing training programs, and understanding their labour rights. They can further offer opportunities for informal care and domestic workers and employers to build legally-compliant contracts and ensuring they are accounting for carers’ needs and rights.
Barcelona Care Centre, Barcelona (Spain)
The Ajuntament of Barcelona offers a pioneering centre that gives visibility to all the existing resources related to caregiving with the aim of ensuring these tailored services and infrastructures can reach the needs of the appropriate communities. In this way, special efforts are made to ensure caregivers receive the appropriate support.
While labour laws often fall outside of local mandates, city governments can play an important role in enacting constitutional rights and international standards in order to ensure decent work for all care workers.
Labour laws and social protections
In many parts of the world, city governments are going above and beyond national regulations through local ordinances to promote local minimum wage adjustments; establishing workers’ rights offices; setting procurement standards and legal consequences for labour violations; or developing campaigns to promote and incentivise above-minimum wage compensation in relevant care-related sectors and for domestic workers. Cities can set an example for payment and benefits to care and domestic workers through their own procurement practices and benefits for city employees.
Living Wage City, Bristol (United Kingdom)
The initiative, recognized in 2019, aims to reduce in-work poverty by expanding real Living Wage employers in Bristol. From 2019 to 2022, it doubled accredited employers to 400, benefiting 43,000 workers, with 2025 targets to add 120 employers and uplift 1,200 more employees.
Cash transfers
Cities can introduce gender-sensitive cash transfer programs that consider care responsibilities and obligations. These programs help reduce income inequality, improve women’s agency in household budgetary decisions, and enhance overall family well-being, particularly in areas like health and children's education. Such programs, when combined with care-related services, ensure caregivers are adequately compensated, breaking cycles of poverty, especially for disadvantaged girls. Maternity cash transfers can also particularly benefit women care and domestic workers in the informal economy.
Unconditional Cash Transfer Program, Lahore (Pakistan)
Through the national Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Lahore’s local government empowers vulnerable women and invisible caregivers through unconditional cash transfers, strengthening women’s agency and decision-making at the household and community level.
Care-givers’ cards
Special cards can be issued by local governments to provide caregivers with improved access to essential services, aiming to ease their caregiving responsibilities and promote their overall well-being. These cards can offer discounted or free transportation, enabling caregivers to more easily attend to errands, medical appointments, and community engagement. Additionally, they may include access to recreational activities and wellness programs, helping caregivers take necessary breaks and reduce stress. By offering subsidies for nutritious food and other health-related needs, Caregivers' Cards can support a balanced lifestyle, and decrease burnout.
Carer’s Card, Barcelona (Spain)
Aimed at all those people who take care of others, whether it is a person caring for a person with a disability, a domestic worker, or a care professional. The card is free and allows access to personalized resources aimed exclusively at carers, to contribute to their well-being, recognize their work, support them and accompany them in their caring activity.
Support tailored for migrant groups
Persons from migrant, refugee, asylum seeker backgrounds, including rural to urban migration, often face additional challenges in accessing social protections and support services. Tailored, dedicated spaces and resources to support professional and personal caregiving activities, including support to navigate and enjoy the local welfare opportunities, free language trainings, integration and information services for caregivers from migrant and refugee backgrounds is critical for ensuring migrant care workers are adequately protected, their basic universal rights are being met and their talents valued. Local citizenship programs that regularise migrant workers in irregular situations through local mechanisms such as registration and access to health services are also key to addressing precarity of care workers from migrant backgrounds.
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