Caregiving

For many years, my wife and I were caregivers to my elderly parents. While I have a sibling, that sibling was not involved in my parents’ care. Being a caregiver, while it did not always seem like it at the time, was a very time consuming job.

This involved a great deal of time away from work. My mother and father were neither one allowed to drive anymore, so I was their chauffeur. Since many doctors didn’t take appointments before 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., or after 4:00 p.m., any doctor’s appointment one of my parents had meant at least two hours away from work for me.

It finally got to the point where we had to place my parents in a nursing home because the other choice was for my wife or me to quite our jobs and stay home with them since the doctor said they needed someone with them 24/7. There was no way we could quit our jobs. While we had dedicated our lives the last several years to caring for my parents, we were the bad guys for putting them in a nursing home. We both felt we did it for their own good. Did we have other alternatives? Our only other alternative was ALTCCS, which is Arizona’s version of Medicaid. It is run through the AHCCCS program. Had we not had sick time and vacation time, I feel confident we would not have been allowed to take as much time off work as we did to care for them.

For these reasons, I could relate extremely well to the issues brought forward in “Juggling Work and Care.” I feel the efforts being made in the UK are absolutely fantastic! This shows that employers in the UK realize that life is not all about work and no family. They realize that people have responsibilities outside of work. I could so very well relate to the gentleman in the UK that was allowed to work from home while caring for his mother. This showed such compassion on the part of his employer.

The lady in the Juggling part one video put it so very well when she said that they have to be able to accommodate the part of the workforce that does care work, whether it mothers or fathers taking care of their children, or someone like me when I was being a caregiver to my parents. Society, in general, needs to learn and take the necessary steps to allow people to work from home more if needed. An excellent example of this was the gentleman in the UK that got his children off to school, then came into work, left early to pick up his children from school, and then worked two to three hours from home in the evening so as to put in his eight hour shift each day. Society also needs to accept the fact that more and more men are staying home fulfilling the role of “Mr. Mom.”