Helping Caregivers

From the Globe and Mail:

"Ottawa to seek ways to help working caregivers balance responsibilities"

Many middle-aged workers who juggle the demands of their jobs with the care of an elderly loved one are choosing retirement over the emotional stress of being torn between their professional and private lives. But, with the economy facing labour-market shortages and as an aging population straining the social security system, the federal Conservative government is searching for ways to keep Canadians working for as long as they want to be employed.  To that end, Alice Wong, the Minister of State for Seniors, will announce in Toronto on Monday a Canadian Employers for Caregivers Plan that aims to find ways to accommodate workers who are caregivers during their off hours. Details of the plan were obtained by The Globe and Mail. “There are currently 6.1 million employed Canadians who are providing to a family member or friend,” Ms. Wong will say in a news release. “Our government will work with employers through the Canadian Employers for Caregivers Plan to help identify cost-effective workplace solutions to support employed caregivers, helping them to achieve a better balance of work and caring responsibilities.” Ms. Wong is creating a seven-person panel, to be chaired by Kim Forgues, the vice-president of human resources for Home Depot of Canada. It will include representatives of companies of various sizes including Ernst and Young, Johnson & Johnson and Assumption Life Insurance. That panel will consult with companies across Canada to identify the most successful and promising ways in which employers are helping their workers to balance the responsibilities of their jobs with caring for a loved one – usually an elderly parent but often a spouse, a sibling, a disabled child or good friend. International experience has shown that the introduction of flexible arrangements including job sharing, teleworking and compressed work weeks can go a long way to convince workers who are also caregivers to put off retirement for a few more years. The panel will report back to Ms. Wong, who hopes to compile the strategies into a document that would be published in the fall or winter. Employment and Social Development Canada has been researching the problems faced by working caregivers for the past eight years and has determined that, once a full-time employee is spending more than 10 hours caring for someone outside the workplace, their interest in staying employed diminishes. The replacement cost of that unpaid care is estimated at $24-billion a year. And the demand for the care of seniors alone is expected to nearly double by 2031. Meanwhile, many caregivers have to miss work to attend to the needs of their loved ones. The Conference Board of Canada has estimated that employers lose $1.28-billion in production annually because of caregivers who have to take time off, or quit, because of their personal duties.

^ Good job Canada! This is exactly what is needed. Many countries (including Canada and the US) are just starting to experience their Baby Boomers retiring and needing help as they age. Many are receiving that help from their family members and now those caregivers are receiving help from the government. I'm not sure if Canada gives monetary aid to the caregivers - even though I'm a Canadian I don' live here - but it would be good if they gave them something. I wish the US did that, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. The US gives unemployment, welfare and disability aid to those that can still work, but are too lazy to go out and actually work while those that desperately need the help receive nothing. I was a caregiver for 10 years and I didn't receive 1 cent or even any advice/information from any government agencies (local state or federal.) On top of that I didn't even have other family members (except the person I was caring for) or friends in the same state as me to help. I did what I had to do make sure my family member received everything they needed. Now that I am no longer a caregiver I am getting some flak about the last 10 years, but I don't care what anyone else says - they didn't step-up to help at the time and so their opinions after the fact hold little weight with me. People think that just because you don't get a paycheck that you have it easy. They have stopped saying that about stay-at-home parents and yet caregivers are still told that. I worked as both a professional caregiver as well as a family caregiver and have to say the family caregiver role was the hardest. Not only was I completely alone, but there were times when I had to stay up round the clock - sometimes 24 hours a day for long stretches of time. There were numerous hospital, ER, ICU and doctor's visits. All of that plus the everyday errands of taking care of my dogs, the house, the bills, meals, shopping, etc made things difficult at times. It didn't help that I live on a mountain with the nearest business/store 23 minutes away (the majority of places we needed were around an hour away) and with the snow and ice 6 months out of the year we couldn't always get off our mountain - not even to the mailbox a mile away. There are those that say I had it too easy because I got to go on different trips, but it was actually the trips that added more pressure and stress. I had to do lots of research on wheelchair accessibility for different countries and states, I had to deal with different languages and even when I had everything planned and double-checked things didn't always go as they should have. The majority of people around the world will tell you whatever you want to hear regardless of what is reality so something that was handicapped accessible wasn't, etc. At the end of most trips I needed a vacation to recover, but I never got one. Could I have used more help from friends and family? Yes. Could I have used any help from the government? Yes. It would have made things a little easier the past 10 years. Would I still have become a family caregiver and stayed the 10 years if I knew when I started what it would have been like? Absolutely. While it was extremely hard and tiring most of the time I was able to spend lots of quality time with my family member who spent hours telling me all sorts of things that many people don't and won't know. ^

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-to-seek-ways-to-help-working-caregivers-balance-responsibilities/article19285365/