caregiver policy

A working caregiver in the United States faces a fundamental math problem.

Your aging parent needs help. Your employer offers a finite amount of vacation. The federal government offers 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave under FMLA. Your state may or may not offer paid family leave at all, and if it does, the wage replacement is partial. Your savings are finite. Your parent’s needs are not.

The math doesn’t work. And the system isn’t going to fix it for you anytime soon.

This post is about why paid family leave for caregivers — adult children caring for aging parents — is so much harder to access than it should be. Five structural barriers, what they actually are, and what you can do about each of them while we wait for the policy environment to catch up.

[Read more…] about 5 Barriers to Paid Family Leave for Caregivers