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Happy Healthy Caregiver Podcast, Episode 171: Balancing Career and Caregiving

I thought it fitting to publish this episode during November, which is National Family Caregivers Month, and this year’s theme is #caregiversconnect. A great theme since on this show we are about creating a connective community of family caregivers and connecting (or I say fast-tracking) you to the help and support you need, crave, or don’t even know about.

I have a relentless passion for seeing and helping family caregivers. When I started Happy Healthy Caregiver, I had a clear mission of providing support and resources to family caregivers, and I wanted to do this full-time. And I also need an income. I worked on Happy Healthy Caregiver while working full-time time and being a sandwich generation caregiver. I had no business starting a business, and yet I knew this was needed. I felt isolated, alone, overwhelmed, unhealthy, and drowning as a sandwich-generation working caregiver. If we change nothing then nothing changes. I struggled with how to monetize HHC. I always wanted people who could afford my services (like organizations and companies) to pay for support for family caregivers. Caregivers are already paying and doing too much.

I monetize my business in 2 ways

  1. Accidental influencer – content, ads, partnerships with companies I like and respect who could offer a product or service caregivers may need or want
  2. Professional speaker – Talking about self-care and caregiving. I’m hired by faith communities, nonprofits, and employers to share my story and fast-track their members or employees to resources I wish I knew about. I validate their experiences and tell them that support is available and where to find it.

Today’s episode is primarily coming from a presentation I prepared for SHRM ATL conference about balancing carer and caregiving. Attendees at this conference were primarily those who work in Human Resources.

Scroll to the bottom of this page to see the full-show transcription.

 

Episode Sponsor – Rare Patient Voice

Do you want to earn cash in exchange for your opinion? Rare Patient Voice (or RPV) helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 700 diseases and conditions. For patients and caregivers, RPV provides the opportunity to voice their opinions to improve medical products and services while earning cash rewards. Rare Patient Voice – helping patients and caregivers share their voices! If you are interested, join the RPV panel at: https://rarepatientvoice.com/happyhealthycaregiver

 

Listen to the show: Balancing Career and Caregiving

 

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Words of Encouragement

Each episode starts with a few words of inspiration or motivation from the Happy Healthy Caregiver Jar. Create your jar by downloading the Caregiver  Jar inserts.  Enhance your jar with the Caregiver Jar refill pack.Caregiver Jar Inserts PDF

‘Don’t focus on how far you have to go. Focus on how far you’ve come.’ #CaregiverJar

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Links & Resources Mentioned

 

Jacqueline in Paris by Ann Mah

Debbie Meyer GreenBoxes

 

 

 

Rosalynn Carter Quote

 

Anne Tumlinson Quote

Brett H. Lewis Quote

Happy Healthy Caregiver Podcast, Episode 155: Everything You Want To Know About Hospice with Barbara Karnes

 

 

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Favorite moments & quotes from the episode

‘There is a growing crisis for family caregivers, and I want, in particular, employers to understand how they can help their family caregivers, and how it’s very doable.’ – Elizabeth Miller #workingcaregiver #familycaregiver

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‘We want employers to see themselves as part of the care team…There’s a lot of different things that employers can do to help support family caregivers.’ – Elizabeth Miller #employeementalhealth #empoloyeebenefits

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‘Really think about how you can not only give your employees a break, but how you can arm them with tools and resources so they can make this journey sustainable, which is a win-win for everybody.’ – Elizabeth Miller #worklifebalance…

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Full Transcription

This is the whole care network helping you tell your story. One podcast at a time content presented in the following podcast is for information purposes, only views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and guest and may not represent the views and opinions of the whole care network. Always consult with your physician for any medical advice and always consult with your attorney for any legal advice. And thank you for listening to the whole care network. We want employers to see themselves as part of the care team.

There’s a lot of different things that that employers can do to help support family caregivers, caring for aging parents or other loved ones while working, raising Children and trying to live your own life, wondering how to find the time for your personal health and happiness. Well, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast to show where real family caregivers share how to be happy and healthy while caring for others. Now, here’s your host, Family Caregiver and certified caregiving consultant, Elizabeth Miller. Hello, everyone.

Thanks for tuning in to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, which is part of the whole care network. If this is your first time listening, welcome. This is a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self care and caregiving into their lives. Each episode has an accompanied show notes page. So if you’d like more details about the topics, products and resources we speak about, you’ll find the show notes by going on the website happy healthy caregiver dot com. And underneath the podcast menu, click the image for today’s show.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, you can also find the show notes link in the episode description. Do you know about WCN University? It’s a digital course library for family caregivers. My first course is available called Six steps to infusing self care in your caregiving life. There are also a ton of other courses in a variety of different topics, search and select for what is most helpful to you right now as a family caregiver, learn more at WCN university dot com. Today’s segment of what I’m reading, I finished reading a book called Jacqueline in Paris by Anne Ma. And she’s actually an American food and travel writer.

The author started this as a travel article retracing Jackie Kennedy, our former first lady’s study year abroad, but she quickly realized that it needed to be more that it turned into a full novel Paris. And really, France is one of my favorite countries that I have visited and I look forward to visiting it again. And actually, as I’m recording this, my daughter is visiting a friend in France right now, my maternal side has French roots and a fun fact about me is that I minored in French at Penn State University, but never really use it a whole lot.

I’m fascinated by the culture, the art and I enjoy reading books that take place in France. This particular historical fiction book chronicles First Lady Jackie Bouvier Kennedy onassis’ experiences when she studied abroad in post war Paris for a year to immerse herself in the language and culture. I’m an admirer of this American icon who goes by Jacqueline in this novel, but didn’t even know that she had this experience. Evidently, Jackie referred to this year as her most carefree and high point of her life. For her, it was transformative.

There are secrets, love and learnings from a young privileged woman overseas. I gave the book 3.5 stars. I rounded it up to four out of five on goodreads and I will link to it in the show notes. My favorite thing this week, my favorite thing this week is something that could be used to meal, prep and transport healthy snacks and items to and from the office. So they are Debbie Mayer green boxes and they don’t look very special. They’re like green Tupperware essentially. But for some reason, this magic Tupperware ish kind of box keeps your fruits, your vegetables, your bread, your baked goods a lot more, um, stays fresh.

A lot more lo lot longer. It’s BP, a free microwave dishwasher safe, made in the USA. I was skeptical but it was a holiday gift from Jason’s aunt last year and I thought it was kind of unique and unusual gift. She raved about them being her favorite thing because she lives alone and it takes forever to go through, you know, the packaging that we get from the grocery store. So I, when I get home from my grocery store, I dump like let’s say a container of blueberries into these green boxes and they are fresh for a month.

I don’t understand it. They look like I said, other containers that I’ve had before except they’re green and they just keep things fresher and for $30 I’m definitely saying this is one of my favorite things right now and it’s got 23 stars on Amazon 10,000 reviews. So evidently we’re not alone in thinking this is one of our favorite things. So I’m going to link to these, um, Debbie Mayer green boxes in the show notes page before we get into our show today. I wanna first shine the light on our episode.

Sponsor Rare Patient voice. Do you wanna earn cash in exchange for your opinion? Rare patient voice or R PV. Helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 700 diseases and conditions for patients and caregivers. R PV. Provides the opportunity to voice their opinions, to improve medical products and services. While earning cash rewards, rare patient voice, helping patients and caregivers share their voices. If you are interested in joining the R PV panel, then go to rare patient voice dot com forward slash happy healthy caregiver. So let’s dive into today’s topic.

I thought it was fitting to publish this particular episode. A solo episode with me sharing about some of the experiences I’ve had as a working caregiver and what companies can do to support working caregivers. And it’s fitting to publish this in November, which is National Family Caregivers Month. And this year’s theme is their hashtag is caregivers connect. It’s a great theme since on this show, we are about creating a connective community of family caregivers and connecting or as I like to say, fast tracking you the family caregivers to help and support you need you crave or maybe you don’t even know about it.

Obviously, I have a relentless passion to see and help family caregivers. When I started happy, healthy caregiver in 2015, I had a clear mission of providing support and resources for family caregivers and I wanted to do this full time. However, I also needed an income and frankly, I didn’t have any business starting a business while caregiving um for older adults and for uh helping to raise kids and working my job full time. But this was just something I was called. And just felt continually called to do, but I needed an income and I worked on happy healthy caregiver while working full time in my it job and being a sandwich generation caregiver, some of the most toughest years of my life.

And as I said, I had no business starting a business. I was, I had felt and was feeling isolated, alone, overwhelmed, unhealthy. Um My poor face was just covered in, in acne. I was gaining weight. I was would just cry on the drop of a pin and I was drowning as a sandwich generation working caregiver. And yet it felt like and I have this sign actually in my office that says change nothing and nothing changes. And that was because, you know, I worked in a lot of transformative things when I worked in it and in my strategy role, but the same thing applies here in this caregiving space.

If we change nothing, then nothing changes. So I struggled with how to monetize, happy, healthy caregiver. And I always wanted people who could afford my services like organizations and companies to pay for the support on the family caregivers behalf. I recognize that you already pay a lot out of pocket. That doesn’t mean I don’t charge you for anything. I do charge for, you know, my coaching services beyond the complimentary session, I charge for my books and some of my other products. But in general how it was gonna make my living.

I wanted someone else to pay me for that and pay for the support on a family. Caregivers behalf. Caregivers are already paying and doing way too much. So I monetize my business in two ways, I’m just being fully transparent. Here is in one way, I’m what I have called myself, an accidental influencer, which means that I provide digital content. It could be, you know, through freelance writing, it could be through ads on the podcast past or in the newsletter partnerships with companies that I like and respect who could offer a product or services that I feel like family caregivers could need or want or maybe could have helped me at one point in my life.

And so people pay me for to introduce their product or service to you. And I’m also like an Amazon dot com influencer. So when I share the links on this podcast, you know, you could, if you go in and purchase that, I get a slight little thank you from Amazon for that. And if you add other things into your cart even better, some of those dollars goes towards happy healthy caregiver to offset my expenses. The second way I monetize is as a professional speaker and I’m passionate about talking about self care and caregiving and self care not being what we in the media really portrays a self care as like eating right, working out, maybe even getting great sleep.

But this all encompassing part of self care, the social self care that we need the professional, the intellectual, the financial, the spiritual, the practical and of course, the physical, you know, I get hired by faith communities, nonprofits and employers to share my story and hope that it resonates with the audience and then to fast track the audience or their members or employees to resources that I wish I knew about. I wanna validate your experiences in the audience’s family caregivers and I wanna let them know that support is available and where they can find it.

So I share this because in today’s episode, it’s primarily coming from a presentation that I prepared for the, a group called SRM, which is the Society of Human Resources Managers or Professionals. And it was particularly done in Atlanta. And at the attendees at this conference were primarily those who work in hr now, my, I have a, you know, threefold purpose that I’m gonna share with you today. And I’m actually going to see if I can share my screen here. I know some of you choose to watch the podcast on youtube.

It’s a little awkward for me kind of talking to myself and um and so forth, but I wanna just give you all the options to listen to read the transcript, which we’ve added to the show notes page or to watch the podcast on youtube videos. Uh Before we get to dive into the show today though, I wanna first, you know, we always kick off things with pulling some words of wisdom from the happy, healthy caregiver jar. And you know, this is a jar that I created. I, I collected these things that spoke to me over the years and then created this jar for my sister when we transitioned, care from me to my to my mom.

So this is a good fitting quote for today. It says, don’t focus on how far you have to go focus on how far you’ve come. Sometimes we just like, move on to the next thing, right? It’s like, oh my gosh, you know, and I’m guilty of this too. Like I’m a producer, I like to get stuff done. Um And that benefited me frankly in my, in my work career and it benefits me as an entrepreneur in my business. But yeah, we do have to kind of look back and say, oh my gosh, look how far that we have come.

You know, even as I’m recording this, like, I’m getting ready to celebrate this six year anniversary of the of podcasting. And I, I like it. I can’t believe it. It’s been six years, almost the happy healthy caregiver podcast in November. As I remember, I kicked it off in National Family Caregivers Month and I’m grateful for, for Chris mcclelland of the Whole Care Network, which my podcast is a part of that whole umbrella of amazing podcasts under Whole Care network. And, you know, he convinced me to kind of give it a try.

And so I get to kind of dust off my broadcast journalism skills and, and do this podcast. And I’ve met some amazing family caregivers along the way because I really do feel that family caregivers are the genuine experts in family caregiving. So I say all that because it’s six year anniversary of the podcast. I’m delighted that things have finally kind of started to turn the corner and that in 2023 as the time we’re recording this, I’m just shy of 50,000 downloads just this year alone on this podcast. So it is resonating with people and I have you all to thank for that.

I’m grateful for your ratings. I’m grateful for your reviews. I’m grateful I post something on social media about the podcast and it resonates with you and you share it with your community because caregivers are everywhere and maybe they need to know, maybe they need to know about the happy healthy caregiver podcast. So I appreciate you all sharing that. Um And the jar, the jar is no, I no longer make the jars for you like in the mason jar, but you can buy the PDF of the inserts.

You can the, the original inserts of over 100 and 50 quotes and sayings is out there. And then I did a refill of the inserts because when I would go see my sister when she was caring for mom in Michigan, I would fill up her jar when I was visiting with new things that I have come across and now I have even more quotes. I probably need to do another, another refill. But I’m hoping that those of you listening like, yes, this will resonate with you potentially as a working family caregiver, what I’m gonna share in this episode.

But my real hope is that you take it one step further and you share it with somebody in a position of leadership within a company or organization that can influence change and put programs and support in places for caregivers within a company or within any type of organization. So with that, we’re gonna switch over, you’re looking at the um my notes, if you’re watching the video of what um what I’ve shared at this conference. And so we’re gonna talk about, you know, that there is a growing crisis for family caregivers and I want in particular employers to understand how they can help their family caregivers and how it’s very doable.

It’s doable. You can even start with the things that you already have and then you can start layering it like a yummy little cake um and putting other services and support out there. And then we’re gonna talk about the specific ways that employers in particular can address the four common caregiving pain points within their organization. I love this quote though. And I think we should all just kind of sit here for a second because this is a big issue and I had just talked to the, you know, President of Sherm Atlanta recently.

In fact, I’m getting ready to do another webinar with them. Um because this is their top, one of their top concerns about supporting the needs of family caregivers. And fellow Georgian and former first lady said it, Beth Rosalyn Carter with there are only four kinds of people in the world. Those who have been caregivers, those who are caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers. So, Ben R will be or will need like we are not going to escape caregiving. It is if it hasn’t already impacted a person’s life yet, it, the odds are that it will, we’re living longer.

We have more technology and medicine than ever before. And there’s a huge gap and family caregivers are filling that gap. There’s not enough people to care for the people who need the care and the family caregivers are the one that are, are taking that on. So this is what caregiving in the US looks like. And these stats are from 20163 they’re from A RP and the N AC um caregiving in the US. So this is pre COVID even this, this these analytics. So these numbers have already likely increased and will probably increase even more.

I understand that every day 10,000 baby boomers are turning age 65. So we have, you know, a growing thing that’s happened or a silver tsunami or whatever. You wanna tag, tag, tag line it. And I wanna talk about that. There’s 25.6000 million family caregivers in the US. Um, that’s a lot of caregivers and that’s just in the US. That’s 24.5% of the population. No wonder we’re exhausted be, or you’re exhausted because there are, it’s equivalent of a part time job. The average, just the average. Now there are many at home caregivers.

There are people who do this 210 260. Um, but on average, they’re working 250 hours per week, which is the equivalent of a full part time job. 22% are, are female, but the male caregivers are continuing to rise. And I also wanna say that family caregivers are younger than we think that they are. Um, almost half of family caregivers in the US are under the age of 1003 years old. And the young young caregiver young carer is a growing, growing segment of our population, people who are helping with their grandparents or helping with their parents, maybe they were disabled veterans and, and so forth so younger than we think.

And many of them, in fact, almost a quarter of them are caring for more than one person at the same time. And here are some of the pain points that caregivers have. So this is, you know, most people want to age in place as they become older adults, they’re, we’re living longer. You know, our hospitals are, they don’t want them to come back and they’re relying on family caregivers to not have that, that reentry. But our health care system is super fragmented and it takes a lot of time to find the help and the support that’s very limited.

And so employers can help fast track these resources to family caregivers and, and really play a big role in that. So the four main pain points are the need for emotional support. You know, 2100% of family caregivers have clinically significant systems of depression. I know I was there. I um you know, I had to ramp up, I already had general anxiety and I had to ramp up my prescription um for depression during the peak of my caregiving years and was grieving my father, that’s twice the rate of the general population by the way.

And 270% said that caregiving made their health worse. I can attest to that for sure. Um Until I kind of, you know, figured out that I needed to prioritize my own health and happiness or I was gonna potentially repeat the same cycle for my my kids. The other pain. Second, pain point is caregiving, caregivers need training and education. I’m hoping what we’re doing here about story sharing and sharing, caregiving and self-care tips on the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast. And what I’m offering through the digital course and social tips that I, that I’m a part of that part of that training and education.

Um but we, they also need training and education about how to care for their care recipients and how to keep them safe at home and the things that I did and that you are doing, like we never thought in a million years we would be these nurses, these counselors, these grief counselors, these transporters, these meal cookers, like we’re doing all of these different things. The third point, pain point is that caregiving, caregivers need organization and coordinations. There’s just a lot of moving pieces. As I said, everything is fragmented.

And someone said to me today, I went to, we’re starting this group, a chapter of um adult Children of aging parents, a cap, they call it. We’re starting a chapter in my county Cobb and the, actually the neighboring county Cherokee and, and outside Atlanta and we have programming that we’re going to start up in 50. And I’m part of the part of the leadership team that’s deciding which programs we’re gonna put on every month for, to help with that training and education. And, you know, one of the uh fellow leaders said to me after today said, wow, you know, look at, we have 12 months of programming and this isn’t even just cutting, you know, the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe we should do more sessions. And I thought, well, we can’t do more sessions, we’re gonna overwhelm caregivers as it is. Um if, if we were to do that, but there’s so much information to fill, fill through. And so we’re, we’re constantly trying to kind of balance and juggle all of these different things and we need the help, we need, this is our pain point. We need someone to help and some tools that can help us with organization and coordinating. And I’m delighted to see that there’s some technology and age tech and health tech that’s really helping to, to bridge that gap.

61% work in addition to caregiving and 26% have difficulty coordinating care like things happen, right? Like there’s a shortage in professional caregivers right now. They cancel on you, you know, family members maybe aren’t showing up the way that we want them to sometimes. Um we also need, you know, care for our pets and our kids. Like there’s just a lot to coordinate. And then the last fourth pain point is the financial support that 45% have had at least one financial strain. You know, I know one of the aha moments for many of the clients that I coach.

Is that what do you mean? Medicare doesn’t pay for long term care. They don’t, you know, they’ll pay for some short term rehab and hospital stays. Um, but you’re really, you know, limited as far as the financial support that you get with either, you know, veterans affairs, potentially or long term care insurance or, um, Medicaid, you know, if, if you, um, uh, qualified for the state Medicaid programs, a lot of it is through private pay. So why do we need employers to care? I, you know, I’ve said that this was a, a big focus area for the Shrm Atlanta and I think she, rm, overall, I know, um, that they had said that it was a, you know, a huge thing, particularly I think it got a lot of attention during the pandemic because life doesn’t stop during the work hours.

And you know, even the the caring company report from the Harvard Business School found that more than 80% of employers, employees with caregiving responsibilities admitted that caregiving affected their productivity. So we need employers to care because they hopefully will care about their employees, you know, support this growing workforce in need and they wanna retrain retain and attract the talent. You know, I know for me, like I was a top performer when I worked in my company and then caregiving happened and you know, maybe even me, not as a not so great top performer during those times, hopefully was still somebody that they wanted to retain and attract because it is expensive to replace people and to attract good people to come.

So 60% 703% of family caregivers in the US are working. So that’s increasing their stressful life events. 80% of them claim an impact, which means that they’re absent from work or maybe they’re at work, but they’re not completely present. And the interesting thought there that I saw was that through these stats that I collected through Harvard Business School and through the um society of human resources is that employers only thought it was less than 25% impact. And the employees are saying that are caregiving 80% impact. Um The average cost for an employer for an each employee to kind of replace them is $5.6000 per year.

So it’s, you know, that’s a lot of money that adds up when you have to keep, you know, finding people, not to mention all the people who are then having to train this person, this new person and kind of get them up to speed. The average caregiver is a caregiver for 4.5 years and the chronic health conditions, the longevity is increasing. And another stat is that 10% of caregivers thought about quitting and then 60% worry whether to quit. And that’s where I was. I wanted to quit. I, you know, thought about it so many times like how I just wanted some more flexibility to be around for my family, but it just was not an option, but some people have no other option and have to quit.

So most caregivers don’t self identify, you know, they just think they’re a son, a daughter, a spouse or friend or somebody who’s caring for it. And the problem with not self identifying and this is where sharing this podcast to even someone, you know, who’s caring can really make a huge impact. Is it that they don’t self identify? They don’t find the support and resources to help them and then they burn out and then there are no, you know, there are another health unhealthy person out there in the world and that helps nobody that doesn’t help the employer that doesn’t help the care recipient, the other members of the family themselves.

And so, you know, employers can use their expertise to educate them and help family caregivers see the value in accepting this role. Family caregivers are everywhere, you know, for. But if you’re someone who’s trying to listen to this and kind of understand family caregivers, they, they are a member of their family, of their origin of, of family choice. That’s what a family is. But then there’s your family, right, your friends and your family, some people call family caregivers. Carers, care partners is another word, but a caregiver is a person who tends to the needs or concerns of a person with a short or long term limitations due to illness, injury or disability.

And it can look differently for, for different people. It could be transporting them to appointments, purchasing or organizing medications, monitoring their health, advocating on their behalf. Researching um all the different things that they could they could do to help improve someone’s health, helping them transfer meaning move around within a space or help them with their personal hygiene and care, doing shopping, managing finances, preparing meals, it goes on and on and on. And until you name it, it’s difficult to find the support and resources you need. So we want to, we want employers to see themselves as part of the care team.

And you know, one of my roles as a care coach is I want people to expand their care team so that they can get more help, immediate family is just one source of help, but their faith community, their neighbors, their care recipients, neighbors, if they don’t live together, community volunteers, professionals, friends of your parents, um extended family, but in your care recipient is also a member of the care team. There’s many things that they can do for themselves to help with their physical and their occupational therapy, their recreational therapy, all of that and professionals and employers can, can play a big role in that as well.

So let’s, you know, quitting is not necessarily the right answer, right. It might be a band aid for now. But future financial issues are just gonna be magnified for this family, caregiver and their family. And you know, there’s a lot of different things that that employers can do to help support family caregivers, the some of the ways that they can do that is low cost medium and high cost. So let’s walk through that. So low cost, let’s the first thing I could say for making caregivers visible.

What could you do at a low cost? Well, you could verbalize the value, you know, maybe have somebody that’s in a leadership position, talking openly about their caregiving situation. A medium cost might be to survey your workforce to really understand how many people within your workplace are working and caregiving And then let’s talk about internal support. So what could you do? Well, low cost thing is you could train your leaders to be supportive. And what that could potentially look like is not scheduling early and late meetings or lunchtime meetings.

The caregivers are relying on these times to get people situated to make phone calls, to coordinate care, to do those types of things. A medium cost for that internal support could be didn’t to allow them to network with other family caregivers within their organization. And that might look like something like a employee resource group, sometimes called an affinity group or an employee network or business resource group. And I have a great post that I’m gonna share in the show notes about how your company can set up an, er, g in your organization.

It’s a great way to provide support for people. And by the way, if you’re looking for content for your er g sign up for the newsletter, you know, you can forward on some content that way or hire me as a speaker to come and do a webinar or an in person event for your organization. A higher cost for internal support would be to educate those employees with caregiving seminars. So like I said, hiring me to come and speak, that’s gonna be an investment that you’re gonna, you’re gonna make, you know, I know for me, I allow employers to record it so that they can save it and, and use it internally so that future employee caregivers can benefit from that content.

Another way that we can help employers can help working family caregivers is by offering care and respite um at a low cost, just listing the options, you know, fast tracking them to the resources in the area. Um And sometimes I think even their employees assistance program might offer these types of options, but they may not even know about it. A medium cost thing could be to negotiate an employer rate so that they get a discount on getting more childcare or more um adult care for maybe for an adult day program even.

So there’s negotiating some employer rates for those things and then at a higher cost than the employee would be to subsidize it and to help them pay for those um care and respite that they are looking for. Another way to provide the respite for caregivers is just like, you know, a getaway um offer them a getaway, a retreat of some sort so that they can connect and kind of, you know, catch their breath and learn from other people and kind of have this lifeline of support. And I work with a company called Brutally Beautiful that offers these turnkey retreats for caregivers and I’m a guide for them.

And so that’s something that could definitely be of help. Another topic is about flexibility and flexibility, could look like job sharing, it could look like part time work or flex hours. Um But like a low cost thing could potentially be the flex hours or maybe re remote work days or a few remote work days. You know, I think we’ve proven one of the silver linings during the pandemic is that remote work can, can be effective and it is a benefit to caregivers, it’s, you know, saving them time and traffic and allowing them to kind of have more control about when the work gets done.

Um So I think the flexibility is key medium costs would be offering some kind of unpaid leave, like some kind of family medical leave Act um or some uh type of leave. I know that there was one company I had heard about that like research all the 50 states and for some reason, they said the state of Washington, they felt like had the best un the leave policy. And so they adopted that leave policy for all of their employees because a lot of the FML A rules vary by state at a high cost would be that paid leave, you know, offering paid leave or taking what you have.

Maybe are your leave policy in your employee handbooks and really expanding it to include caregiving situations. Another topic that employers can use to help working family caregivers is to help with employee wellness. So what could that look like? Well, at a low cost that could be unpaid self care resources. So maybe you, you know, have an outdoor dining area, a garden trail, a gym, um a chiropractor massage, a masseuse that comes in or some types of healthy meals and snack options there. Um Those might help with uh low cost ways and maybe some medium cost ways might be to negotiate employer rates for healthy meals to be delivered or or cooked for.

Um and those types of things to our gym memberships to help promote their employee wellness. High cost could be a paid self care resources and those employee retreats that I talked about and really thinking about how you can not only give your employees a break but how you can arm them with tools and resources so that they can make this journey sustainable, which is a win, win for everybody. And then another way through is through your employee benefits. So you can a low cost way is just to socialize what you already have.

Like I know for me, I didn’t know that I could use, you know, my, my PTO, my personal time off to help care for my mom until I went in and I saw it in the employee handbook. Um and I had to educate my boss about it and say no, I can use my PTO to help relieve my sister and care for my mom. I promise you this is not a vacation. Um And then there’s, you know, a high cost way might be providing focused caregiving benefits.

And there are some platforms out there that you can use to augment and uh um support your family caregivers. And if you need help, you know, starting your er G and getting that go going, I’m happy to be a consultant for you to help share um what that could look like. So, you know, one of the things that like worry is inevitable, right? Like mindfulness, meditation, you know, we can reframe it but it’s gonna creep up on it. So we wanna address this. And when I became a certified caregiving consultant in 2 2016, I wanted to help myself while I was, I was helping others.

And as a coach, we use these wheels and in this case, the worry wheel to find out what’s really bothering um our, our employees and our family caregivers. So these are types of tools that we can use to have these conversations and we wanna feed our worry with action. Action is really the antidote for worry, you know, peace of mind from worrying comes with action. Uh Doctor Henry Link said that we generate fears while we sit, we overcome them by action. And employers can help fast track working family caregivers to actionable steps.

And so I’m gonna be suggesting some actions that you can take for these most four common steps and I don’t wanna should on anyone. I’m just gonna lay out the options and you can, you know, pick what makes sense for your organization. So one of your worries for your family, caregivers um might be that their emotional and physical health is deteriorate, deteriorating. You know, I’m tired, I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I’m not myself anymore. I’m angry, resentful. And they, and they get that because it’s kind of like the boiling the frog analogy, right?

Where if you were to jump into boiling water, you would completely jump out because the water is, is boiling hot. But it, for a caregiver, it can be like a slow boil. They don’t know that they’re, they’re burning out um until they look one day and they say, who is this person? I’m looking at in the mirror. So one of the actions you could take is to schedule regular breaks, encourage employees to take their paid leave, identify the respite services in your county, coordinate relief from support, caregivers and share um the self care options that you have.

You know, and even an overnight work trip could be a respite opportunity, be mindful if your caregiving employee wants to go back to the hotel and order dinner in and watch HD TV. And maybe just hold the judgment on that and say, oh, this poor person like this is probably allowing them to get a breath of air. And the founder of daughter, which is an organization that I’m a part of that helps offer virtual support to um two family caregivers, multiple of events a month. So Anne Tumlinson said that a break is better than a breakdown.

Another action about this, you know, the health deteriorating is that we can do hard things, but we don’t have to do them all alone. So how do you address this worry is by finding the right people to talk to, you know, finding caregiving, specific coaches like myself or a grief coach or some, you know, a talk therapist, whatever you need, uh local support groups, uh maybe it’s an AC A P chapter, um adult Children of aging parents, maybe it’s um an organization through one of the other nonprofits in your area.

Chapters, some disease or condition specific organizations could be your fade community. Sometimes your your area agencies on aging may offer support for caregivers. And then I think all the employee resource groups that I spoke about those affinity groups can really be a wonderful thought to kind of meet people where they are, they’re already working together, finding them the places to talk to and the best resources I believe come from other family caregivers that are in the same local community because they’re gonna fast track them to those local resources and that’s where those, er GS can be really powerful.

Another worry worry number two is, will I make the right decisions? I’m afraid of doing something wrong. And so what this worry is really talking about is the need for that second pain point. I was talking about a training and education. You know, many of us as caregivers were never formally trained in health care or social worker field. We’re just figuring it out as we go, you know, drowning in the deep end, treading water into the fire. Um and there’s decision making fatigue that comes with that, you know, there’s second guessing and I do like to say that we do make the best decisions with the information we have at the time.

But let’s get into some other actions that we can take so professionals, professionals can help you with your decision making, take counsel with them. My dad used to say that he didn’t necessarily know more, he just lived longer and he, you know, taught me about, you know, taking advice from other people. And one of the first professionals that I often recommend that people seek out is an elder law attorney and I don’t think you’re ever really too young to seek one out. They do this every day, they know the local resources that are available, they know how to maximize your resources.

They’ll often give you a complimentary consultation at least, but they’re well connected and they’re gonna get all that important paperwork set up, which is a real peace of mind tactic. Primary doctors are also great resources when you need to talk to someone and you need someone to be that unliked person. So someone to kind of pull aside and say, you know, how can you help me? I’m worried about this person driving. Um, they’re not taking their meds and their safety concerns. A primary care doctor can really be a great person to really take that, um, that kind of role on aging life care experts.

Um I’m part of an organization called Certified Senior Advisors. It’s another certification that I have. There’s a whole directory online. Um, I think it’s CS A dot US, um, to find that we’ll link to that in the show notes. And, you know, there’s the National Hospice of Palliative care organization, there’s financial planners, there’s Medicaid and Medicare consultants. And, you know, there’s folks who can tell you about a, again the hospice and palliative care. Um, they provide comfort, but just knowing that that’s out there and knowing what’s available, you know, I’ve been through the hospice with several different people in my family.

And, um, you know, one of the myths and things that I see is that people don’t take advantage of hospice soon enough and so we’ll link to the Barbara Carnes episodes you can learn about, you know, more about hospice. But my mom was on hospice for two years and it was a big support for our family in many different ways financially and extra hands. Another action you can do. Um so that, you know, to kind of, I’m worried about making these decisions is to gain clarity on, on your care recipients or your loved ones wishes.

And I’m gonna link to the conversation project and the five wishes document on Amazon, which serves as a legal advance directive in many states. But these are things that help you have those co courageous conversations about, you know, what your your loved one wants to be true, what is living well look like for them. Um And, and understanding that so that when you get to this end of life, time phase in a caregiving journey that you have some information that you’re armed with and that you can be present with that person and, and doing this sooner, you know, there’s a lot of cognitive things that happen out there.

So you want to kind of get this information while people can talk about it and be open about it and it’s probably likely not a one and done conversation, but um a continuing conversation. And then another way you can kind of, you know, be informed is by listening to Caregiving podcasts, like happy healthy caregiver. There’s other ones within the whole care network, like daughter and untangling Alzheimer’s and dementia. There’s disability podcasts like Loma. Um, there’s so many different things you can search in your podcast app for a certain topic and get the information to come up.

That way. Another action you can take is to educate and learn, get trained by watching videos, you know, reputable videos. Um you know, your hospital discharge or your doctor’s office might give you instructions and then you fear that you missed the steps or you didn’t get it all. So this is a way to kind of go back, you know, maybe looking at some reputable sources on youtube or if you wanna understand as a caregiver, what it could potentially be like to be a person living with dementia.

There are virtual dementia tours that an employer could hire in to explain to those folks who are caring for someone with a cognitive disorder what that is like. And there are platforms and online libraries with courses for caregivers like WCN University. I love this quote by Brett Lewis that says doctors diagnose nurses heal and caregivers make sense of it. All you are the nucleus to everything that is happening and with your loved ones care. And yet at the same time, you know, you deserve to live your life and live a happy and healthy life.

The third worry is to address the pain point around the need for care coordinations. I am doing everything myself I don’t even know where to find or ask for help. And again, many of us were never formally trained in health care social worker, and we’re just figuring it out as we go. So one of the actions you can take here is that um for this particular worry of doing everything yourself is to request more hands on help. There are apps that help with care, co ordination. Um You know, there’s one of them that working with is connected caregiver.

I’ve also worked with the circle of team. There’s ionic care, there’s a lot of different caregiving apps out there that you can um take advantage of and put your requests out there. They help you coordinate appointments and events, they’ll do medication reminders, you can share updates and do video chats and share important documents, um vitals, tracking and um safety monitoring. So how many different things that technology can help us work with? And I think employers can help fast track caregivers to these resources, these apps and even doing something kind of a little bit more old school by just keeping a list in your phone of the ways that people can help help.

So fast tracking to resources is another action. So offering things like referrals and provider lists, amplifying your existing benefit offerings. Um bringing people in to, to talk about specific caregiving and self care, webinars and panels and in integrating your employees in those events um where we’re talking about not necessarily balancing, which I think is a myth but how you integrate self care work and caregiving. How do you manage family dynamics? How do you prepare for a caregiving crisis? And those are the, some of the topics that I share with different employers getting organized, you know, blocking out time as a primary caregiver on your work calendar.

Um so that you have some breathing room in your day and having one place, one paper or digital calendar for or and binders for these important documents like streamlining things. A digital password vault can be a great app to use and then having um things set up automatically. So you have some systems in place like automatic bill pay and bank alerts and, and so forth and then legal and financial paperwork, having your powers of attorney and all of that stuff together. And just by making that call and appointment to elder law care attorney is like step number, step number one there.

But there is some practical self care. I think about just getting everything organized and getting our arms around everything. And I think that, you know, we do that already, right? And many of our work roles, we are managing so many different projects. And if we kind of also look at caregiving as a another huge project and that we can’t only be single threaded on that, we have to have a whole team of people and by having this information in systems in, in organized places, we’re able to kind of pull more people into that care team and share the load and share the care.

Our last worry worry number four is will there be enough money? And this is a tough one because I wish there were better resources around there. You know, this is around the pain point of financial support. You know, Medicare doesn’t pay for long term care and Medicaid varies by state and in some states has a very long wait list and you have to reapply over and over again. It can be an arduous process to be admitted into Medicaid program. And long term care isn’t insurance is expensive.

So just making a case for why working caregivers still need to work because it’s costly care is costly. And many of us choose in some cases to leave as caregivers or change careers or to minimize our hours. And we are then sacrificing future retirement benefits and overall earnings that we need as, as families to live. So workplaces can offer the ideas that I mentioned earlier to build a culture of acceptance and guide toward resources or offer additional financial benefits for their family caregivers. One way is to teach them about saving money, right?

So um maybe there’s employer negotiated deals where you can help them save money on some of these big categories. You know, there’s apps that can help compare prescriptions and see where the best, how you can get the best deal on that. Um, buying in bulk and subscribing and saves or different codes s using coupon codes and cash back online or using your FS A and HS A and, and educating people about what kinds of products and things that they might be purchasing that are eligible to come out of their flexible spending account or their health savings account or to deduct on their taxes and then understanding the options.

You know, there’s a lot of education that’s needed around Medicaid and Medicare in particular and meeting with professionals to review their portfolio and to make things stretch and work for as long as that, as long as they can and talking to, maybe you offer some conversations to professionals through your employer assistance program, but your caregiver might not even know about this program. So again, it’s just advertising and making people aware about the benefits that are already available in your organization. And of course, I wanna stay connected and be a part of your care team, your employer’s care team.

You know, I’ve got the, the, the daily self care journal um where I’m journaling was a big part of my healing and help me process what caregiving look like. And this is a prompted journal that people can try on and they can see if journaling is making them feel happier and healthier. There’s a podcast, this Happy healthy caregiver podcast has over 100 and 70 episodes and what makes this podcast different is that I believe that family caregivers are the experts in caregiving. And while the people on the show might have done other amazing things or develop products or are offering different services, they all have a personal caregiving story and that’s what you’ll find, you know, in the different podcast episodes and on my site happy healthy caregiver dot com.

When you go there, you’ll, you’ll see, you know, you wanna um connect with your community. And so you might wanna connect with fellow male caregivers, dementia, caregivers, young caregivers, um sandwich generation caregivers and so forth. And so I’ve kind of organized that so that you can fast track to those blog posts and those podcast episodes and those products and services that would be for your caregiving segment or Caregiving community. And then also just self care, maybe you’re, you’re struggling with social self care or financial self care.

And so I’m fast tracking you to those resources on the Happy Healthy caregiver website. I have a Facebook group that I administer as a certified caregiving consultant and with two other certified caregiving consultants where we put the focus on self care for family caregivers and we put content out there. Um So that we say, you know, we see you, you’re not alone. I do a newsletter. Um And if you’re not on the newsletter, I hope that you join it. Uh We’ll, we’ll link to that in the show notes page.

And maybe there’s resources that you could pass on within your organization to your employees who are caring and um to join yourself every week. I share something happy. I share something healthy and I share something caregiving related. I’m doing videos and sharing tips on social media channels. As I mentioned, I host a support group here in the Atlanta area, but I’m also part of daughter hood dot com um or daughter hood dot org rather, and we offer virtual support circles. Um It’s either led by me or one of my other fellow, amazing leaders who can um help either have a topic that we talk about or um a general connection circle and then I offer complimentary coaching sessions.

So if you wanna see what it’s like to work with me and just to kind of connect, we can um set up some time for that and maybe that’s something that we can bundle and do at scale for your um for your employees. And that’s basically it for today. You know, I just really wanted to take this opportunity for National Family Caregivers Month to really say, you know, how can we change this? How can we change the situation that’s happening out there for family caregivers? And, you know, we’ve been at this a while.

Um and I kind of feel like, you know, there’s people like way, you know, up at the top in government organizations that are trying to figure them out maybe they’re kind of talking to each other. And then there’s people kind of at my level or fellow Carp Preneurs, people in the care economy who are hustling to try to make change. And there’s this gap and I think that employers can help fill this gap and other organizations can help fill this gap so that we don’t end up being so fragmented.

And the caregiver support world too, that we can come together with a common purpose and, and really unite to help the 53 million plus caregivers in the United States. And with that, we’re gonna wrap up the show. So I will, you know, link to all of this in the in the show notes page. You know where you can reach out to me. I’m at happy healthy caregiver dot com. You can find me just about on every, every social channel and I just wanna stay connected and um and help you and understand you and just know that I see you.

So thanks for tuning in today, if you’re an employer and you want to reach out for more information on how we can work together. See my contact page on happy healthy caregiver dot com, reach out or reach out on linkedin and let’s schedule some time to connect to see how I can help you um meet your strategic goals of supporting the caregivers in your work environment. Thanks for joining us today on the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast. On the whole care network. As always show notes that a company today’s episode can be found on my website happy healthy caregiver dot com.

Just look under the podcast menu for today’s episode image and that will take you to the page with the links and information we spoke about today. You’ll also find other resources on the website along with links to purchase the just for you daily self care journal. When you purchase from my website, you’ll get a signed copy and for a limited time free shipping. If you’ve enjoyed what you heard today, consider subscribing to the show on your podcast platform. It really helps other family caregivers find the podcast and you’ll automatically receive our biweekly shows in your podcast listening queue.

Maybe while you’re subscribing, consider leaving a five star rating and review or just simply talk it up on your social channels. Let’s stay connected. I’m on Instagram and Facebook as Happy healthy caregiver. And until we meet again, please take care of you. This is the whole care network helping you tell your story one podcast at a time.

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