  Providing for the needs of the vulnerable is a critical component of social
and health policy-making. In particular, caring for children and for vulnerable
older people is vital to the wellbeing of millions of families throughout the
world. In most developed countries, this care is provided through both formal
and informal means, and is therefore governed by complex policies that interact
in non-obvious ways with other areas of policy-making. In this paper we present
an agent-based model of social and child care provision in the UK, in which
agents can provide informal care or pay for private care for their relatives.
Agents make care decisions based on numerous factors including their health
status, employment, financial situation, and social and physical distance to
those in need. Simulation results show that the model can produce plausible
patterns of care need and availability, and therefore can provide an important
aid to this complex area of policy-making. We conclude that the model's use of
kinship networks for distributing care and the explicit modelling of
interactions between social care and child care will enable policy-makers to
develop more informed policy interventions in these critical areas.
