The Cost of Not Caring

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The Cost of Not Caring is different way to think about the dilemma of today’s unpaid carer in the age group 45 to 70, as well as those younger or older.

 If you are a woman in the age range 45 to 70 you probably could have written many of the chapters in this book. If you are a man aged 45-70? Not as likely, but a third of you might resonate.

You are likely to be working part- or full-time, until the physical and emotional strain is too much to bear. You are truly “The Caring Generation” and simultaneously “The Club Sandwich Generation”.

You are ground zero of “the care crisis” and millions of working people like you are trying to do their best to support their ageing parents and other loved ones while holding down one or more paid jobs, raising a family, supporting an ageing spouse, often managing a child with disability, and in many cases also pitching in time, energy and money to help with grandchildren.

And most do not want to admit that it might be affecting their work, either through absences or presenteeism resulting from being preoccupied by their care responsibilities for fear of affecting their jobs and incomes.

Even organisations that recognise and fund a long list of support measures for employees have yet to address the eldercare responsibilities of some of their most valuable employees.

The majority of employers do not include support for employees working while caring for ageing parents and loved ones. It defies logic: while not every employee will choose to have children, or be fortunate enough to have them, every employee has or has had parents. Explicit acknowledgement and support of employees who are working while caring for their ageing parents would seem to be a no-brainer. It is not.

This book has been designed to inform and guide companies, organisations, governments and employees through the brave new world of a workforce being transformed by factors appearing to be beyond their control. The external drivers may be beyond control, but workplaces do have a range of effective measures not only to manage the future but to prosper.

The Cost of Not Caring means the absence of effective and appropriate as well as affordable and timely means to help us support our parents and other loved ones to age with dignity.

It takes a unique perspective. It is about the very specific situation of employees as unpaid carers (caregivers in the US) of their ageing loved ones. It applies commercial, personal and macroeconomic perspectives. It applies a systems approach to a wickedly complex systems problem. And it contains pragmatic and straight-forward guidance on how individuals, organisations, managers and governments can start to address today a problem that affects them and society as  whole, now and into the future.