Elder care
Caring responsibilities
Options for assistance
Examples of elder care in Australian workplaces
Life in Australia both at work and in the family has undergone profound changes over the past three decades.
Many people have significant caring responsibilities for other adults including their partners or spouses, elderly relatives and relatives with disabilities. In many of these cases, carers provide care for their relatives in addition to fulfilling paid work responsibilities.
As of 30 June 2004, people aged 65 years and over represented 13 per cent of Australia’s total population, or 2.6 million people (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australian Demographic Statistics, 2004, Cat. No. 3101.0, Table 4.1).
Caring is largely undertaken by family members. According to the ABS, of all older people and people with a disability who received informal care in 2003, 92 per cent were assisted by family members.
Similarly, the chances of a person becoming a carer increases with age, peaking in the 55-64 years age group. More than one in five people in this age group are carers (22 per cent).
The ABS reports that around 475,000 people are primary carers - defined as those who provided the majority of informal care to people with one disability or more. Around 78 per cent of carers live with the person in their care, who is most often their partner.
Balancing caring responsibilities with paid employment can be challenging for primary carers. Primary carers are often not employed, with 61 per cent outside the paid workforce. A further 21 per cent of primary carers are employed part-time and 17 per cent work full-time (Source: ABS, Social Trends 2005, Cat. No. 4102.0, 2003).
The ageing of Australia's population and the increasing labour force participation rate of women, mean that in the future many working men and women will be caring for adult relatives. When a person needs special care the partner is often the first to be called upon, highlighting the need for workplaces to be flexible in order for employees to meet their caring responsibilities.
Carers of adults may be involved in a great variety of tasks and responsibilities with varying impacts on the ability to combine caring and work. Such care often involves long periods of dependency and a greater degree of coordination of services than for child care responsibilities.
The responsibilities may vary according to the age and number of relatives a worker is caring for, the relative's health, and where the relative lives (which may or may not be with the carer). Responsibilities can range from occasional simple tasks such as visits, to ongoing support in all aspects of the relative's life such as help with providing personal care, and assistance with mobility, finances and communication.
For example, in 2003, 47 per cent of people aged 65 years or over (1,164,600 persons) reported needing assistance with at least one personal activity (for example, self-care or health care) or other daily activities (for example, paperwork, housework or meal preparation). People often required assistance in more than one area—on average, with three to four activities (Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2005, Australia’s Welfare, No. 7, p156).
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Flexible work and leave arrangements
The difficulties of being a primary caregiver with conventional working arrangements, mean that many caregivers need work that offers flexibility.
Flexible working arrangements can address a range of employee and business needs. There are a number of options that can be offered by an employer which may assist the worker with special caring responsibilities. These include flexible working hours, regular part–time work, job sharing, home–based work, career break schemes and leave with and/or without pay.
Other measures can be taken that are based on changes in the overall work design of a job including how the work is done, how jobs and tasks are organised, who performs the tasks, when and where the work is done and how the work is managed.
Carer's leave
Carer's leave enables employees to take time off to care for and support an immediate family or household member who is sick. Entitlements to carer's leave may be contained in workplace agreements or human resource policies and may sometimes be referred to as family leave. Under the federal Workplace Relations (Work Choices) Act 1996, minimum entitlements to personal/carer’s leave (including sick leave, carer's leave and compassionate leave) are provided as part of the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard (the Standard). Under Work Choices, new agreements will need to comply with the Standard throughout the life of the agreement.
For more information see the Carer’s leave fact sheet.
Aged care initiatives
The impact of aged care on the workplace has been recognised by many businesses.
A growing number of organisations are putting in place initiatives such as aged care resource and referral services; medical benefits for employees, their spouses, parents and parents-in-law; and aged care brokerage services which provide a single point of access to existing aged care services.
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The Queensland Department of Education and the Arts provides employees with elder care assistance that includes: flexibility for employees to use sick leave to care for elder family members; and information on elder care facilities and services on the company website.
3M Australia Pty Ltd provides employees with dependent and elder care information and referral services.
Zurich Australia provides employees with dependent care responsibilities with flexibility within the work environment to attend to these needs. Such flexibilities include a change to hours worked. Employees will also be reimbursed for reasonable penalty or additional dependent care costs incurred due to extended work hours (for example, overtime worked on an ad-hoc basis) and attending conferences/training courses or compulsory work function outside of normal work hours.
Carers, and other interested people such as employers and unions, can obtain information about support services by contacting the Carers' Association in your State or Territory.
For more information on work and family, go to the work and family home page.
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