For Aida Beltre, being able to work remotely during the pandemic has been a relief.
She was currently caring for her 86-year-old father. Her father had been in and out of the hospital and undergoing rehabilitation as her stroke worsened in recent years.
She’s probably able to get by as she works from home for a rental real estate company. In fact, she had to deal with it like most family caregivers in the early days of COVID-19. Community programs for seniors were closed.
Even when Beltre switched to a hybrid job — some days in the office, the rest at home — caring for her father was never easy, but manageable.
She was then ordered to return to the office full-time in 2022. By then, Medicaid had increased her home health care from five hours a week to 17 hours a week. But that wasn’t enough. Beltre, now 61, was always in a hurry and always worried. She couldn’t leave her father alone for so long.
she quit. “I wanted to meet her father,” she said.
In theory, the national debate over remote and hybrid work is a huge teaching moment about the demands placed on the 53 million Americans who care for elderly and disabled relatives.
However, the debate over “returning to the office” has centered on commuting, convenience, and childcare. The fourth C, caregiving, is rarely mentioned.
That’s a missed opportunity, caregivers and advocates say.
Employers and colleagues understand the need to take time off to care for a baby. However, the time spent caring for others is less understood. “We need to de-stigmatize things like childbirth and adoption and create a culture where it is normalized,” said Karen Kavanaugh, director of strategic initiatives for the Rosalynn Carter Caregivers Association. Although her stories are cradle-to-grave, she said, “Mostly it’s cradle-to-grave.”
After her stepmother died, Beltre moved her father into their home in Fort Myers, Florida, in 2016. Her father’s needs are increasing and she is juggling, juggling, juggling. She is exhausted and she is currently unemployed.
She’s not alone either. Roughly one-fifth of U.S. workers are family caregivers, and nearly one-third quit their jobs due to caregiving responsibilities, according to a report by the Rosalynn Carter Institute. Some people reduce their working hours. The RAND Corporation estimates that caregivers lose $5 trillion in household income each year, but that amount has almost certainly increased since this report was released nearly a decade ago. ing.
Beltre briefly worked remotely, but has since resigned. The position required her to market to people struggling to care for the elderly, which made her uncomfortable. She rarely goes out, she only goes to the grocery store and church, but she still always checks in on her father.
“This is the story of my life,” she said.
Workplace flexibility, even if desirable, is not a substitute for national long-term care policy, a viable long-term care insurance market, or paid family leave, which is of interest to Washington.
President Joe Biden gave a shout-out to family caregivers in his State of the Union address in February, and in April he announced a plan to support caregivers and incorporate their needs into the planning of federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. He issued a presidential order. Last year, his Department of Health and Human Services released a national strategy to support family caregivers that outlines how federal agencies can help and provides a roadmap for the private sector.
Biden ticked off the priorities and potential innovations, but did not provide funding. It should come from Congress. And Congress is now embroiled in a battle to cut spending, not increase it.
Therefore, the rest is left to the family.
Remote work bridges gaps in care, especially if the patient has an advanced illness or dementia and requires 24-hour intensive care from a relative who is trying to work full-time from the kitchen table. You can’t fill it all up.
However, there are countless scenarios where the option of working remotely can be extremely useful.
when the disease recurs. When someone is recovering from an injury, surgery, or rough chemotherapy. When a paid caregiver goes on vacation, becomes ill, or becomes unemployed. When another family caregiver, who usually does the heavy lifting, needs a break, literally or figuratively.
Celebrity Gretchen Alkema said, “It was an incredible blessing to be able to attend to my father’s urgent needs during his final days and to be with my stepmother who provided 24/7 care.” It was,” he said. She was an expert on aging policy and currently ran a consulting firm, allowing her to work from her father’s home if needed.
Rose Garcia, a small business owner and caregiver for her husband, appreciates that flexibility.
Garcia’s husband and business partner, Alex Sajkovic, has Lou Gehrig’s disease. Because of his growing needs and the damage the pandemic has done to her San Francisco stone and porcelain design company, she has downsized and redesigned her business. They cashed in his retirement savings and hired a part-time caregiver. She sometimes goes to work in person, especially to meet architects and clients, which she enjoys. She works from her home the rest of the time.
Coincidentally, two of her employees also had caregiving duties. Her experience has made her open to doing things differently, she said.
For one employee, a hybrid work schedule didn’t work out. She had many demands on her, plus her own serious illness, so she was unable to accommodate Garcia’s schedule. Another of her staff members, who has a young child and an elderly mother, was able to continue working thanks to her hybrid work.
Garcia said a third employee is coming full-time. Since he is often alone, his dog also comes over.
In Lincoln, Nebraska, Sarah Lusby co-owned a yoga studio, taught classes, and cared for young children. Then, when she was 35 years old, her twin sister, Erin, and Lewis had a sudden cardiac event that triggered and caused irreversible and ultimately fatal brain damage. . For three heart-breaking years, her sister had strong needs even when she was in rehab centers and nursing homes. Rusby, her mother, and other members of her family spent hours by her side.
Rusby handled all the legal and administrative formalities for the twins and sold the studio.
“I’m still trying to recover from years of no income,” said Rusby, who is currently working on a graduate degree in family care.
Financial stress is not uncommon. The overwhelming majority of caregivers are women. When caregivers quit or go part-time, they lose their pay, benefits, Social Security, and retirement savings.
“It’s really important to keep someone connected to the labor market,” said Kavanaugh of the Rosalynn Carter Institute. Caregivers “want to continue working, otherwise their financial security will be compromised and they may lose health insurance and other benefits.”
However, given the high cost of home health care, poor insurance coverage, and chronic labor shortages in home health and adult day programs, caregivers often feel they have no choice but to quit their jobs. There is.
But at the same time, more employers facing a competitive labor market are recognizing that flexibility around remote and hybrid work can help them attract and retain workers. Leading consultancies like BCG offer advice on ‘working caregivers’.
Rita Chola, director of long-term care at AARP’s Public Policy Institute, said successful remote work during the pandemic has weakened the ability of bosses to say, “We can’t work that way.” In recent years, it has become more common for employers to offer childcare support policies to their workers. Chola would like to see them expanded “to represent the wide range of caregiving that occurs across the lifespan.”
But even if COVID-19 has redefined in-person work, working from home is still not the norm. Only one in four private-sector companies had some or all of their employees working remotely last summer, according to a March report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and in 2021, the second summer of the pandemic. This was down from 40%. He says only about 1 in 10 workplaces are fully remote.
And remote work and hybrid work are primarily targeted at people who work in computer-based jobs. Restaurant servers cannot refill coffee cups via Zoom. An assembly line worker cannot weld car parts at his father-in-law’s bedside.
But willing employers, even in the service and manufacturing industries, can explore creative solutions, such as changing shift schedules or dividing up work, says Michigan Business and Pilot Program. Kavanaugh, who is implementing it, said. Another strategy is cross-training, so that employees can fill in for each other when they need to step into a caregiving setting.
For Ida Beltre, who finds caregiving both a burden and a joy, the new approach won’t come soon enough. She is now looking for a hybrid job. “I’m a people person,” she said. “I have to leave.”
“Every night, my dad says, ‘Thank you for everything,'” she said of her father. “I told him, ‘I’m doing this because I love you.'”
