

For a 47 year old doll who has been loved and played with, she is not looking too bad, but please be aware she isn't perfect. Her eyes are a beautiful green colour and open and close well. Susie has rooted blonde hair styled in a baby bob, it is a little choppy especially at the back and looks as though it has been cut, but it is soft and doesn't appear to have any plugs missing. Her spoons are no longer with her so I'm unable to say whether she still turns her head as she should although it can be moved manually. Her teeth are missing and the magnet can be seen close up. There is a magnet in her mouth which was originally hidden behind two front teeth. Susie would turn her head towards the spoon of her favourite food, but her head would turn away from the unpleasant food. She is 20" high and quite heavy due to a magnet mechanism inside her.She was originally supplied with two spoons, one of which was a spoon 'containing pleasant food' and the other 'unpleasant food'. Todd company who used the names Roddy and Bluebell as their trademarks. Choosy Susie is a chubby legged toddler type doll made in 1967 by the D.G. Through the lens of Choosy Suzy, the chapter illustrates how a discourse of choice reduces the occupational craft of caregiving to one of care-for-hire and advances the deregulation of labour by combining the unregulated qualities of familial care with the economic qualities of enterprise.A hard to find 'Choosy Susie' doll. Hence, Hayes argues that a discourse of choice points towards a reconfiguration in the gendered exclusion of paid caregivers from the scope of labour law. Despite a rights-orientated language of ‘empowerment’ and ‘choice’, the marketisation of social care carries political meanings that are antithetical to the interests of women paid to provide hands-on care. It validates a step change in the marketisation of care by requiring local authorities to promote service-user choice and control over care as a matter of statutory principle, as well as by requiring that they stimulate and support local care markets. She finds that a discourse of choice underpins the Choosy Suzy narrative and finds statutory expression in the Care Act 2014. Her method in this chapter is to identify and analyse research data as ‘discourse’. Jane Aronson, Professor of Social Work, McMasters University, Toronto, Canada

Lydia Hayes illuminates vividly the gendered injustices embedded in home care work in the UK, tracing their origins in discriminatory labour laws and the privatization of social care firmly grounded in the seldom tapped knowledge of front-line workers themselves, her analysis will be of interest to Canadian, US and wider audiences striving similarly to resist the market-driven degradation of home care work and care in the community. Hayes critiques core provisions of the Care Act 2014 which point to the erosion of paid caregiving as a form of labour which is recognisable in labour law. It focuses on neoliberal understandings of social care provision as enterprise. In Chapter 4, the character of Choosy Suzy narrates the determination of paid care workers to promote the choice and independence of their service users. Chapter 4: Choosy Suzy (and the Care Act)
