A/68/293 the introduction of household/community care capacity assessments to guide hospital discharge decisions. 98. In particular, quality and affordable care services for carers and parents can have a major positive impact on the human rights of both caregivers and receivers. Investment in childcare, elder care and disability support should therefore be increased, prioritizing disadvantaged and underserved areas. The services should be affordable, and provided free to those who cannot afford to pay. In particular, all women should have economic and physical access to highquality, culturally appropriate childcare for children under school age, including children with disabilities. As well as having a major positive impact on women’s right to work, quality early childhood education accessible to people living in poverty has many proven benefits for children and society as a whole. Innovative approaches such as mobile crèches should be considered in order to reach communities living in poverty. 99. Low-income countries can overcome resource constraints by building on existing social care programmes to provide better working conditions and improve the quality of care, for example through the expansion of child nutrition centres into quality preschool or educational centres with wider coverage. 100. An important part of the State’s investment in care services is the recruitment of adequate numbers of paid care professionals such as nurses, and providing them with decent pay and working conditions. Overall, States should shift from a strategy of reliance on market and voluntary provision of care that is informal and exploitative to one that allows professional, decently paid and compassionate forms of care. 101. States affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic should also take specific measures to ensure that unpaid home-based caregivers are adequately supported, including by providing counselling, training, livelihood support and skills development, savings and credit schemes, medical supplies and equipment. 102. States have a duty to regulate private service providers, to ensure that they are not violating the human rights of the population they serve, including the rights to equality and non-discrimination and the principles of availability, accessibility, acceptability, adaptability and quality. To this end, a human rights impact assessment should be conducted before care services are outsourced to private providers, and at regular evaluation intervals. 2. Infrastructure and technology 103. The time burden of unpaid care work for women living in poverty can be significantly alleviated if there is adequate infrastructure in place in their communities — particularly through reduced time spent on travel to workplaces or markets, meal preparation, water collection and fuel collection. The availability, access to, and use of, critical infrastructure must therefore be significantly improved, prioritizing disadvantaged areas such as remote rural communities and informal settlements, explicitly seeking to provide better access for these communities to work and services. 104. The construction of new roads, affordable public transport, low-cost electricity, solar and water energy for domestic purposes, and water and 13-42271 23/24