By John Paul Marosy, President
Bringing Elder Care Home LLC
jpmarosy@charter.net
(508) 854-0431

What would it be like for a person who is providing care for a sick or disabled relative to work for a family caregiver-friendly company?

How would it feel to live in a family-caregiver friendly neighborhood?

More specifically, how might the policies and practices of a family caregiver-friendly social service or health organization support individuals who are holding down a job while trying to arrange care for mom or dad?

A group of work/life professionals from some of the largest companies in the U.S. are now exploring these questions with professionals who work at elder care agencies. I recently attended the second of two conferences on this topic - and I talked with the conference organizers. The preliminary results of their discussion provide food for thought for all of us.

When representatives of companies in the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care (ABC) http://www.abcdependentcare.com met with personnel from several Area Agencies on Aging in Dallas in June 2002, the agenda was wide open. Judith Presser, judith.presser@wfd.com, a consultant with WFD, the work/life balance consulting firm serving ABC, had approached the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (N4A) about convening a group of its members for a discussion because, she says, "the issue of elder caregiving has become of increasing importance to the Champions of the ABC." Particular areas of concern include:

• Availability of services in the community - services for caregivers and information for families, and
• The issues of long distance caregiving.

A specific first step emerged from that initial meeting: a draft Self-Assessment Tool for Community Agencies. As the introduction to the tool states: "A caregiver-friendly agency

• strives to identify caregivers and
• understand their personal and work responsibilities,
• recognizes their contributions, and
• creates flexible, individualized supports that enhance the ability to give care while balancing self-care needs, and
• works in partnership with and seeks input from the primary caregiver, the older person, other non-paid caregivers, as well as other appropriate agencies within the human service system."

• A group critique of the Self Assessment Tool for Community Agencies. A modified version will be posted soon on the N4A and ABC websites for the use of community agencies.
• A working group from ABC companies created a list of policies and practices that might be examined in assessing the family caregiver-friendliness of an employer.
• Ronda Talley, executive director of the Rosalynn Carter Institute http://rci.gsw.edu/intro3.htm articulated a vision of an integrated corporate/community approach, setting the stage for the creation of the family caregiver-friendly community.

From N4A's point of view, this is a timely collaboration. "Typically, going into a corporate office, making those connections with a corporation, can be difficult," for a local agency, says Ms. Markwood. The challenge is to "figure out ways where Area Agency on Aging (AAA) services can fit into that corporate human resources system as a referral. This project - the assessment tool and other things that n4a can do as a result of it - will be a benefit to our AAA and Title VI programs and will help them meet a need that they have identified."

The American Business Collaboration (ABC) is a collaboration of leading U.S. companies (Champions) partnering to ensure that their employees have access to quality dependent care programs and services to help them manage their work and personal responsibilities. Current ABC Champion companies are: Abbott Laboratories, Allstate Insurance Company, Deloitte & Touche, Exxon Mobil Corporation, GE Capital, IBM Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Texas Instruments. The basic principle guiding the ABC is the belief that companies can accomplish more by working together than by working alone.

The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (N4A) is the umbrella organization for the 655 area agencies on aging (AAAs) and more than 230 Title VI Native American aging programs in the U.S. Through its presence in Washington, D.C., N4A advocates on behalf of the local aging agencies to ensure that needed resources and support services are available to older Americans.

How would YOU define the family caregiver-friendly employer? In what ways do YOU feel community agencies need to change in order to become friendlier to employed family caregivers? Post your ideas at our "Elder Care/Work Balance" discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bringingeldercarehome

John Paul Marosy
Editor and President,
Bringing Elder Care Home LLC

John Paul Marosy is the author of Elder Care: A Six Step Guide to Balancing Work and Family, available from Bringing Elder Care Home Publishing on line at www.bringingeldercarehome.com or by calling 508-854-0431.

"Elder Care: A Six Step Guide to Balancing Work and Family is a remarkably compact, easy-to-read and easy-to-use guide to this complex topic. Employees who have used the guide have told me that the extensive listings of key websites and "800" numbers saved them hours of research time."

Virginia Mc Donald, Vice President, Human Resources, Webster Five Cents Savings Bank

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