Cindy Dunbar’s work began to suffer when her mother’s health started going downhill.
Dunbar, a billing clerk at Rand Materials Handling in Pawtucket, said she spent her days at work worrying what toll Alzheimer’s disease was wreaking on her mother while she was at home alone. Some evenings when Dunbar got home, her mother would be bruised from careening about her apartment. Other days, Dunbar’s mother didn’t eat a bite, or ate all day long.
“It happened so fast – she was capable until last December, when my father died, then she went into a sharp decline. It was very upsetting to go off to work,” said Dunbar, a Pawtucket resident. “I was constantly calling home making sure she was OK, going home just to check on her, and it did affect my work.”
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
In early July, on the advice of her mother’s doctor, Dunbar enrolled her mother at the New Horizons Adult Day Center, one of 19 adult day centers in the state run by the Rhode Island Adult Day Services Association.
Now, Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., Dunbar’s mother spends her days in a structured social environment, supervised by nurses and trained caregivers. And Dunbar said she has been able to work more productively knowing her mother is safe and enjoying the best day possible.
The adult day centers can be seen as one step up from a senior citizen center, said Karen Beauchesne, RN, the president of the Rhode Island Adult Day Services Association.
“They are like senior centers with more supervision. They are alarmed facilities, and they offer more structure, with a variety of activities, nurses on site and regular meals,” said Beauchesne. “We also provide a lot of assistance to the caregivers. Fifty-six percent of caregivers are working people, and we offer education and support groups to them.”
Services at the adult day programs offer nurses who check participants’ health and monitor their medication, recreation therapists and others who concentrate on keeping elders engaged and active, said Beauchesne. All of the adult day programs in Rhode Island charge their clients a private rate, but offer assistance programs through the Rhode Island Department of Elderly Affairs, and Medicaid.
Employees who are splitting their time between work and caring for an elderly relative at home is an issue that employers nationwide are increasingly wrestling with. Caring for an elderly or disabled relative can leave a once-productive employee too stressed to be effective. Even worse, it can drive carefully trained, highly desirable employees to simply quit their jobs, said Beauchesne.
Approximately one in eight workers are managing an elder-care situation, and surveys suggest that almost half the work force will deal with elder-care situations in the years ahead, according to a 1999 study paid for by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
By 2007 the number of households providing care for people age 50 and older could reach 39 million, according to the Met Life report, conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving and the National Center on Women and Aging at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
In the report, 33 percent of employees managing an elder-care situation said they would cut back on the hours they work; 25 percent said they would pass up an opportunity for relocation or transfer; 22 percent said they planned to take a leave of absence from their job; 20 percent shifted their work status from full to part time; and 16 percent left their jobs.
At the same time, corporate America is estimated to lose up to $29 billion per year in employee productivity from the approximately 14.4 million working and providing care to an elder, according to a 1997 report in The Washington Post.
It’s a problem that can strike anywhere in the organization, affecting line workers, supervisors and executives, said Beauchesne. And it often hits the most productive members of the team hardest, because they are the ones with the strongest sense of commitment and the deepest desire to do the right thing, she said.
“Often, (the caregivers) are at their wits’ end. Father has died and mom moved in with daughter, and then mom begins to wander the streets while daughter works. Others come home for Christmas and find their father’s food is moldy and the mail is not opened,” said Beauchesne.
“Folks who join us are able to maintain in the community. They socialize,
they are able to form new relationships, to get a sense of self and a sense
of community back.”
For the complete current issue, visit our subscription Web site, or call (401) 273-2201, ext. 227 or 234.
