Once employees begin minding frail, aged or disabled loved ones, many are forced out of their jobs. But there are ways to help carers stay working.
By Carolyn Boyd
Care factor
Ten years ago, a phone call in the middle of the night changed Dona Graham's life. At 38 she was the editor of the national indigenous newspaper The Koori Mail, and was used to giving orders and being listened to.
Graham's grandmother had injured herself, and the young editor was to become her carer. 'I thought "not a problem". I'll get it all fixed up and I'll be back at work within two days,' she recalls. 'Within a week I was in tears, and within a month I had to resign.'
During the next five years, one in four Australians expects to care for an aged person or a loved one with a disability. Already, 2.56 million Australians provide informal care, and nearly half a million of those are primary carers, to a frail or disabled person.
The chances of being asked to be a carer for an elderly person are rising as Australia's population ages, going from a 'pear-shaped to coffin-shaped spread', as one expert puts it.
Once employees begin minding loved ones, many are forced out of the workforce or have to reduce their hours.
'There was nothing available for people like me who were working carers,' Graham recalls. 'I was incredibly frustrated because when you look at it, working carers contribute about $3bn a year in unpaid wages.'
In a survey by the Taskforce on Care Costs, 70 per cent of workers expect to manage any future caring role by working more flexible hours. More than half (54 per cent) expect to reduce their work, and 41 per cent would want to work from home.
Sadly, many of those workers' expectations aren't likely to be met. Carers say it is difficult to find workplaces flexible enough, particularly if they want something other than part-time hours.
'Quite often these people have to leave the workforce because they can't get the support they need,' says Graham, who is now the chief executive of the Disability and Aged Information Service, and editor-in-chief of the NSW Working Carers Support Gateway.
'It's the little things that grate, like the lack of ability to condense work hours, to "bank" hours or to negotiate start and finish times,' she says. 'Unfortunately caring is still seen as being women's business, whereas it really needs to be moved and the spotlight needs to be shone on it from an economic perspective.'
The labour force participation rate of primary carers is only 39 per cent, and just 19.2 per cent of primary carers work full time. That's less than half the rate of the general population.
Many carers are being sandwiched between minding their own children and minding elderly parents or relatives. Robyn Gow is a classic example. She splits her time between caring for her severely disabled 25-year-old daughter Elizabeth, who has Rett Syndrome, and helping her 80-year-old mother. Before becoming a full-time carer, the 50-year-old managed a prestigious women's clothing store in Brisbane.
'We expected that she [Robyn] would be able to return to this employment after we had a family,' husband Robert says. 'She is now a full-time permanent unpaid carer and receives a carer's payment of $42.00 per fortnight, or 27 cents per hour.'
Robert, who has been the sole breadwinner for the family since his daughter's birth, works for the Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts as an auditor.
'I have a master's degree in business, and as such should be able to attract a much higher wage than I currently receive,' he says. 'If I was successful in applying for a position on higher pay than now our household income would decrease as my wife would lose the carer's payment. This would see us also lose the health care card and a family tax benefit, which we only receive because my wife gets the carer's payment.'
Robert is the lowest paid auditor in his department but holds the highest qualification. 'Most of the staff in the internal audit unit are level six, seven or eight, and I'm on a four,' he says.
Mother-of-three Felicity Maddison AM (she was appointed as a member of the Order of Australia in 2002 for services to people with a disability, their families and carers) lives in housing commission and works three days a week for a salary of $29,000. Yet she has a master's degree and an earning capacity of $100,000-plus.
'I cry when I think what I could be earning,' says Maddison, who last year stood for the Senate on the Carers Alliance ticket.
Two of Maddison's children, aged 31 and 29, have a rare syndrome that makes them intellectually disabled, legally blind and immune deficient.
For most of her married life Maddison worked part-time in health care. But then she became the sole carer of her three children.
'When I separated and divorced 16 years ago everything came crashing down around my head. I couldn't work because of the support needs of the children,' she says. 'All of a sudden I became welfare dependent, and as a result I'm going to have about $15,000 worth of superannuation. My retirement is not going to be any better than my life has been living on a carer's payment.'
The Taskforce on Care Costs wants employers to give carers of the frail, aged and disabled the same flexible work practices that are beginning to be afforded to parents of young children, and to ensure a consistent approach from all managers across a company.
Carers New South Wales chief executive Elena Katrakis agrees: 'We'd like employers to acknowledge the needs of carers within the working environment.'
However, employers can't go it alone, and the government needs to help out more. 'There are different pieces to the puzzle here,' Graham says.
In 2006, 64 per cent of unemployed carers said they had quit their jobs because alternative care was too expensive. Six out of 10 said they would start working again if care was more affordable.
The Working Carers Support Gateway wants the Rudd government to undo the detrimental affects of the Work Choices legislation.
'Historically, working carers would volunteer for the worst shifts on the roster,' Graham says. 'They'd do the Sunday shift or the Friday night shift, the reason being they would get higher penalty wages, so they could work less and be paid more, which would allow them to care for longer.
'With the introduction of AWAs [Australian Workplace Agreements], which do away with penalty loadings, now they have to work longer hours for less money. It has been an unexpected outcome.'
Maddison says governments keep carers impoverished by not offering enough respite services. 'You need substitute support,' she says. 'Just like you have child care, you need adult care. I work part-time and I keep my income below the level [for public housing and a health care card], so I'm with a master's degree and a bachelors degree and all my years of experience, and I am working well below the level of salary that I would be able to get.'
For Maddison, even if she could get full-time care for her children, it's too late to start working more. 'I'm pragmatic enough to realise that I'm 61, and whatever way you cut the mustard, I don't have time now to earn the money to purchase a home to make myself self-sufficient, so I will require to maintain public housing,' she says. 'I'm worth more dead than I am alive because the one thing I do have is an insurance policy.'
Says Graham: 'It's a cultural education shift that we're after here. It's dawning quite quickly on a lot of the larger employers that working carers are a hidden gold mine. The cost is very, very small for them, all they need to do is be flexible.'
Employers, Graham says, have come through a period where they wanted to regulate their workforce. 'That's why working carers were the first ones to be trimmed from the workforce; because they don't fit that homogenised block,' she says. 'Working carers can't always stay back without notice for a meeting. They may not be able to go away and attend a conference because they can't get respite.
'But they bring loyalty to you and appreciation that you acknowledge their situation and you want to support them. In many ways the working carer needs stability because the rest of their life can be so unstable.'
A big issue can be identifying working carers. 'People choose not to acknowledge or recognise themselves as carers in case there's backlash,' Katrakis says.
Graham says carers face discrimination: 'Unfortunately it's often their own colleagues who will say, "You're leaving early", or "Isn't it nice to start at 10am?"'
Julie Pianto spends 30 hours a week working for Australia and New Zealand Banking Group from her home in Bendigo, Victoria. The ATM and EFTPOS expert juggles her IT job around caring for her severely disabled son Christopher. At nearly 18, he can't walk or talk and is still in nappies.
Although Christopher attends school, a low immune system means he often has to stay home, making it impossible for Pianto to commit to regular hours in an office. 'Last year Christopher spent 50 per cent of his school time at home,' Pianto explains. 'I've been approached several times since I've been doing work for ANZ by other banks. My answer is always no. As long as the ANZ wants me I'll stay with them, because they were the ones who actually did this first.'
At Insurance Australian Group, Gaye McMahon has been balancing working and caring for 18 years. At first she worked part-time to mind her young children, now she does so to help her ailing parents. 'IAG lets me swap days if my parents have a specialist's appointment, or there's something I need to do for them,' she says.
Last year the company offered her a five-day-a-week management role. She was chuffed but turned it down. 'That day they said, "Are you happy to do the role in four days a week?"' McMahon remembers.
'I've told my managers all the facts: that my parents are elderly, they are both sick and I really need a day off, and they've accommodated that. It has been a very positive experience. My parents were able to help me out [minding my children] so I could work all that time and now it's changed and I'm able to look after them.'
Accommodating carers
How to keep carers on staff
flexible work hours
opportunities to work from home
access to training when entering or returning to the workplace
extra paid leave in return for reduced pay
additional carers' leave
encourage carers to discuss their needs with you
look for creative solutions to their needs
understand that carers don't always know when they are going to need time off
try to give plenty of notice of changes to working hours or days so the carers can adapt their care arrangements
Carers' law in Australia
The laws around employment and caring vary from state-to-state, and federally. Across Australia it is illegal to discriminate against carers. Workers are generally entitled to take between five and 10 days of their own sick leave each year as carer's leave when they are the primary carer. When all their sick leave is used up, employees are often allowed to take unpaid care leave, mostly two days at a time.
In 2004, Western Australia became the first state to enshrine carers' rights in legislation. South Australia followed in 2005. The legislated rights relate more to carers as clients of government agencies and organisations, but Carers NSW chief executive Elena Katrakis says they are important because they formally recognise that carers have their own rights and needs.
In NSW, the state Industrial Relations Office is undertaking a mature-age carers in the workforce project, part of a wider whole-of-government five-year carers action plan.
The office hopes to help NSW businesses attract and retain women 45-plus who also care for an elderly relative. It is making a video showing how employers and their employees who have caring responsibilities have made changes to working arrangements so employees can combine caring and work.
Carolyn Boyd is a Sydney-based journalist who writes business and human interest stories. She juggles her work with caring for her one-year-old son, Finn.
