How do care concerns becomes more visible on domestic policy agendas? What factors lead to care-sensitive social policies? Care is a social good that underpins all development however it is all too often invisible in policy and programming, amongst donors and in budgeting. Unpaid care work restricts women’s and girls’ participation in civil, economic and social spheres and adversely affects their health and wellbeing. When unpaid care is successfully incorporated into national policy agendas women’s unpaid care work contributions are recognised and strategies to redistribute responsibilities for care towards the state, the community and men are developed. This presentation incorporates the findings of a review of the invisibility of care in two sectors: early childhood development and social protection. The review finds that in the area of social protection the main policy focus is on the redistribution of care responsibilities from the family to the state to allow women to enter into paid work. In the area of early childhood development 49% of policies reviewed demonstrated the invisibility of care. It is difficult to draw substantive conclusions about factors that support care sensitive policies but it is likely that context and the presence of ‘champions’ plus changing demographics, and shared discourses about gender roles are more likely to influence how unpaid care is incorporated into policy than evidence on the benefits of incorporating concerns about unpaid care. There is a need for a fundamental shift to recognise unpaid care as work, to reduce the drudgery associated with it and to redistribute it. Recommendations include that social policies take into account concerns of unpaid care including the role of men, the state and development practitioners, that access to public services is increased and that unconditional cash transfers be introduced.