Job-related programs help find day-care options

By Ellen Foley/Staff Writer

Robin Jenrich didn’t’ know if she could face the endless phone calls and bureaucratic hassles involved in finding care for her ailing father.

The Minneapolis woman, who works full time in an office and part time as a store cashier, was steeling herself for the search when she found help in an unexpected place:  the company bulletin board.

A notice on the board told Jenrich about a benefit her employer has begun to offer through Minnesota Child Care Innovations Inc. (MCCI), which helps it’s clients’ employees find day care for their children – and care for their elderly parents.

Jenrich’s father, Bob, a 70-year-old stroke victim paralyzed on one side, was told this summer that he no longer qualified for his day-care program at the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital.

The situation became critical when Jenrich’s mother, Lucille, 62, suffered neck and arm injuries in an industrial accident.  She could no longer provide the constant care her husband needed.

Robin Jenrich reached Kathy Kacher, an MCCI founder, with one phone call.  Within a few weeks Kacher called back with several care alternatives and some tips on how Jenrich’s father might requalify for the VA day-care program.

“I’d never been able to find anybody to help me before,” Jenrich said.  “We had tried the church; we had tried neighbors.  Then I found this service that would do all the legwork for me.  It was really refreshing.”

Throughout the country, other workers are finding new programs offered by their employers to reduce the work and stress thrust upon the adult children of elderly parents.  The buzzword for the service is “elder care.”

“Child care was the corporate benefit of the ‘80s,” said Jane Royse of the Wilder Foundation’s Community Care Resources Division.  “Elder care will be the corporate benefit of the ‘90s.”

MCCI serves several Twin Cities companies, included General Mills, Colle McVoy Inc., Martin Luther Manor, and Lutheran Brotherhood.  The Wilder foundation is a Twin Cities subcontractor for Work Family Directions, a Massachusetts firm that collects information about elder care from more than 170 community-based agencies nationwide.  Wilder’s Workforce Elder Care Services division also offers an information and referral service to area employers.  The service provides seminars, support groups and onsite counseling for adult children burdened with helping parents who can no longer care fully for themselves.

Some experts contend that aging issues have caught the attention of corporations more quickly than day-care issues did because chief executives, many in their 50s and 60s, have had recent personal experience with the problems of elder care.

Others point to shifting demographics that have pushed baby-boomers to demand help from their employers.  Sociologists refer to adult children in their 40s and 50s as the “sandwich generation,” a group caught between the problems of their own children and those of elderly parents.

National studies show that a quarter to a third of the working population cares for an elderly parent or relative, and that such are costs each worker five to 12 work days a year.

Fortune Magazine and John Hancock Financial Services found that the figures have not gone unnoticed.  In a recent survey they reported that six of 10 executives blame eldercare responsibilities for problems at work.  The problems include employee stress, unscheduled days off, late arrivals and early departures, above-average use of the phone and absenteeism. 

U.S. Census Bureau statistics indicate that problems with elder care will increase.  Nearly 30 million people in this country were 65 years or older, and 12.2 million were 75 or older, in 1987, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That population will double by the year 2020, the bureau predicts.

The present flood of women into the workforce also could present problems.  The Department of Labor indicated that 80 percent of new employees by the year 2000 will be women and minorities.  Since women are the primary caregivers for the elderly, companies seeking qualified workers in the predicted labor shortage of the ‘90s may find themselves in a bind.  A present, as many as 10 percent of elderly caregivers say they have to quit their jobs, according to some studies.

“Three of every four elderly caregivers are women,” said Royse, who works with the Wilder Foundation’s Workforce Elder Care Services.  “Studies show the average woman spends 17 years on child care and will spend 18 years on elder care.”

That latter period may be extended to women living in Minnesota, a state second only to Hawaii in life expectancy.  Minnesota women live to an average of 82 and men to 79.  Only about 9 percent live in nursing homes, Royse said, and many of the others are cared for at home. 

“We’re finding retired women (over 65) caring for parents who are 85, 90.  (People today) think they’ll have their retirement years for traveling and playing with their grandchildren.  But they’re not going to be able to do that, because they’ll be caring for their elderly parents.”

Many companies are considering referral services because they are relatively inexpensive.  Others, such as AT&T, offer extensive plans that include leaves of absence for elder care, “flexible spending accounts” in which employees can pay for elder care services through pretax earnings, and long-term insurance for employees looking for protection against the rising costs of nursing-home care.

Experts point to the innovative approach of Stride Rite, a shoe manufacturer with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., which has expanded its company child-care center to include care for aging parents.  Executives approved the project after finding that a quarter of its employees now care for elderly relatives and another 13 percent expect to do so in the next five years.

“We’re asking families to work full time and then be care-givers.  We’re asking them to do more and more and we need to support them,” Royse said.

More work needs to be done in education, she said, adding that many employees don’t tell their employer about their responsibility for elderly relatives because they fear that they will be pegged as problem workers who are absent frequently and distracted on the job by troubles at home.

The fear can keep workers from learning about the range of affordable help available in the area, or can lead them to err in evaluating the needs of elderly parents.

Royse told of one client who was frustrated in her attempt to find a nursing home for her mother.  After workers at Workforce Elder Care Services interviewed the employee they realized that the major problem was that the elderly woman was unable to fix her own meals.  A mean service would allow the elderly woman to stay in her home and save the family the expense and trauma of moving her to a nursing home.

For Don Hasbargen, a consultant and partner with the local office of Hewitt Associates, an international management consulting firm that specializes in compensation and benefit issues, the nub of the problem is much more frightening.

The major problem is not lack of referral services but a shortage of day-care programs and nursing homes.  Until there are more programs and homes, caregivers will have to quit their jobs to stay home, he said.

Hasbargen said local companies are looking at the issue, but there has not been much activity.  He would like to see entrepreneurs create new daycare services for the elderly but he said the financial failure of many daycare programs for children may stunt that entrepreneurial instinct.

“It’s an emerging and significant issue, and the thing that’s troublesome about it is that, as a nation and a culture, we don’t plan very well.  It’s a very insidious challenge for us because we may not realize its significance until it’s too late,” Hasbargen said.