Heidi turned the ringing alarm off. It was 6:00AM and time to get the kids off to school and then drive to her in-laws to provide care. Debbie, her mother in-law, is 75 years old and suffering with arthritis and cannot lift the father in-law, Jim, out of bed or help him to the shower. It is important that Jim gets into the shower each day because he is incontinent. This has been the daily routine since Jim’s stroke 3 years ago.
At the end of the day, after a full day’s work at her business, picking kids up from after school programs, Heidi returns, this time to get Jim ready for bed. Heidi’s husband is currently out of the country on a military assignment. He had made a promise not to put his dad in the nursing home and the dad had joked that if he did, he and the children would be CUT OUT OF THE WILL. Heidi is a family caregiver and a small business owner. There are approximately 85 million unpaid family caregivers in this county facing these kinds of challenges and many are employees.
Typically, moving the in-laws into her home would seem like a “simple solution” for someone in Heidi’s situation but that is not as simple as it may seem. Without the right planning and components, moving parents into your home can be life altering and most often catastrophic.
There are 5 things worth considering and 2 things that must be put into place before aging parents move in with their adult children especially for those adult children in the sandwich generation, like Heidi. Some of the things worth considering include; the current work life balance of the person who serves as the primary hands-on caregiver, the ages of the children in the family, the level of care needed by the care recipients, the psycho-social impact of the move on the relationships in the family, the complexity of the family dynamics and the financial impact of the care on the family.
Two things that must be put into place are a level of care assessment and a respite care plan. For family caregivers in corporate America, there is help and resources available through Employee Eldercare Assistance Programs. These programs offer consultation, care navigation, long term care planning, access to affordable and practical help, online courses, teleseminars and webinars to ease the burden of family caregiving so that the employees thrive, and the business does not suffer loss productivity and rising health care cost associated with the stress of family caregiving.
Employers interested in offering an Employee Eldercare Assistance Program can contact me at Stella@StellaNsong.com or call 833-603-0022.
