Communiqué, issue 6, 2004
Special Foundation Forum 2004
- Time to re-think work-life balance: Second Foundation Forum debates key issues
- Do we need to work longer hours?
- Time and flexibility
- Investing in work-life balance – a win-win situation?
- Work and care - payback for the elderly or investment in a new generation?
- Keynote round-up
- An economy or a society: where do we live and work?
Articles
- Focusing firmly on the year ahead
- Foundation forges closer ties with the EP
- Disability and social exclusion: Reversing the trend
- Europe ‘not losing jobs’ due to outsourcing of ICT services
Previous issues of Communiqué
The debate about work and care has traditionally focused on the provision of childcare. However, as the members of this workshop agreed, care of the elderly is an equally, if not more important issue, particularly in view of Europe’s ageing population.
The scale of the challenge of caring for the elderly, including the human and financial costs, was underlined by research presented at the meeting. In the US, for example, where approximately 34 million people are involved in looking after individuals over the age of 55, either on a part- or full-time basis, studies have found that companies lose up to $30 billion a year, due to employees taking time off to care for the elderly, sick and disabled.
The huge cost to individual carers, in terms of lost wages and time, was also highlighted at the workshop: in some cases it can be as high as $659,000 over the course of the person’s ‘career’ as a carer. Nearly 25% of carers also claim that the pressure of looking after an ill or elderly family member or friend has a detrimental impact on their health. In addition, the workshop highlighted the fact that many carers are forced to make significant adjustments to how they work, in order to fit in their second ‘career’ as a carer: 57% of those who have full-time jobs have to arrive at work late or leave early; while 17% have to take time off; and 10% have to switch from full- to part-time employment.
Surprisingly, as participants of the workshop heard, 40% of carers in the US are men, although they tend to be involved in less intimate types of caring than their female counterparts, such as driving elderly relatives to appointments and managing their financial affairs.
Although there isn’t yet comparable data for Europe, there was a general consensus within the workshop that Europeans favoured home-based care solutions, underpinned by high-quality social services, rather than paying for services. To achieve this, the workshop recommended better coordination between health, employment and social security services, as well as housing policies that enabled the elderly to stay at home, rather than in institutions.
Encouraging immigrant carers was also considered but discounted, on the basis that the elderly usually prefer family members to provide care and that it would only create ‘care vacuums’ in the immigrants’ home countries.
Workshop 4 key issues
- US companies lose up to $30 billion a year due to employees taking time off to care for the elderly, sick and disabled.
- The cost to the carers, in terms of lost wages and time, can be as high as $659,000 over the course of their career as a carer.
- 60% of care givers work and two-thirds of these have to change how they work in order to look after the elderly and infirm, including switching from full- to part-time employment.
- The typical US ‘care giver’ is a 46 year-old baby boomer who works and looks after her mother. However, 40% of the 34 million people caring for older people in the US are male.
- In Europe, Denmark leads the way in home care for the elderly: 22% of people over the age of 65 receive home care, compared to 18% in Sweden and 1-2% in Spain and Greece