Any attempt to distinguish between public and private spheres as spaces of care gives rise to immediate difficulties. This is true not least because is necessary also to distinguish between formal care, provided pursuant to a contractual or other legal duty, and informal care, provided in the absence of such a duty. For example, while formal social care tends to be associated with public responsibility and the state, in England ‘few local authorities are now involved in the direct delivery of care and support services’, with most services operated by private, for-profit providers (Kelly 2013: 24).1 Much formal care takes place in private homes, and such homes and other private property can be appropriated to fund the social care system. Moreover, privacy must be in an important value in the context of a care home that might in other respects be characterised as public (Hughes 2004). Conversely, the recognition of, not to mention reliance on, informal care (which might legitimately be characterised as a matter of private arrangement, albeit inherently informal) by the state arguably gives it a public character, and the social care system on occasion turns informal carers into care workers through mechanisms such as direct payments (Ungerson 2004). There is also an important distinction between public and private law, with the former encompassing claims against the state by one or more individuals and the latter encompassing claims by one or more private individuals against another such individual or group. The concepts of public and private therefore cut across the economy of care.