I think it was @mathanxiety who said that many (nurses/teachers/lecturers) work 16 hours a week because the alternative is cooking, cleaning, shopping, caring for elderly relatives, etc.
For the record, my mother, step and MIL, (late 80s) all now get attendance allowance which is not means tested. It's £68 pp per week, MIL gets the higher rate (Parkinsons and partially sighted now). That goes towards taxis to appointments, cleaning and for MIL DH also pays for a carer to go in once at day. Likely to be upped. For both households we now organise shopping to be delivered via the big supermarkets - It's very easy to organise and there is nobody else to help us care or ensure care is given.
The notable thing is that od all the people who help:
The cleaners are eastern European
The carers are Asian
(All first gen arrivals to the UK)
At home, since 1999 my cleaners have been Polish, Bulgarian or Romanian, the gardeners for the last ten years are Portugese.
It's interesting how much work, traditionally done by women is now done by forwigners relatively newly arrived in the UK, and done willingly by women. The traditional male jobs still seem to be done by Englishmen: delivery drivers, odd job man, our decorator, etc.
I'd be interested to know if any social research had been done in relation to this as these are all jobs that can be done flexibly and are reasonably paid. The cleaners for example get £15ph in the SE; £13ph in the NE.
This is also reflected at work where all of our cleaning staff are foreign, as are our catering staff, albeit with the right to work.
How people can complain about immigration when we have a society that allows the indigenous or well settled populations to avoid work, I simply don't understand.