Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The proportion of employees with caring responsibilities is growing and, as a result, policies that support working carers are becoming increasingly important. Written and informed by national experts, this is the first publication to provide a detailed examination of the development and implementation of carer leave policies and policies in nine countries across Asia, Oceania, Europe and North America. It compares the origins, content and implications of national policies and practices intended to enable workers to provide care to family members and friends while remaining in paid employment – known as ‘carer leave’.

As populations age around the world, increasing efforts are required from both families and governments to secure care and support for older and disabled people.At the same time both women and men are expected to increase and lengthen their participation in paid work, which makes combining caring and working a burning issue for social and employment policy and economic sustainability. International discussion about the reconciliation of work and care has previously focused mostly on childcare. Combining paid work and family care widens the debate, bringing into discussion the experiences of those providing support to their partners, older relatives and disabled or seriously ill children. The book analyses the situations of these working carers in Nordic, liberal and East Asian welfare systems. Highlighting what can be learned from individual experiences, the book analyses the changing welfare and labour market policies which shape the lives of working carers in Finland, Sweden, Australia, England, Japan and Taiwan.

Beschreven wordt hoe men werknemers die de zorg van oudere familieleden op hun nemen hierin kan bijstaan. Er wordt een overzicht gegeven hoe dit wordt aangepakt in Australia, Canada, Frankrijk, Japan, Zweden en de Verenigde Staten.

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Published in Cooperation with the Center for Practice Innovations, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University How do working parents balance their work and child care responsibilities? What if an employee has responsibilities for adult or elderly family members or friends? How similar or distinct are these dependent-care responsibilities in their rewards and their consequences? What about employees who have multiple caregiving roles? In Balancing Work and Caregiving for Children, Adults, and Elders, the authors explore how employees with caregiver roles juggle the responsibilities of work and family. They suggest that, in our current socio/economic reality, dependent care needs to be addressed as a corporate, family, and community concern. Drawing from literature in the field, as well as their large-scale study, they present a thorough discussion of the stressors experienced by workers caught in the often conflicting demands of dual roles. The authors consider multiple factors that contribute to the experience of stress and work-related outcomes such as absenteeism. These factors include: employee characteristics, demands of caregiving and work roles, and the resources available within the workplace and family. Policies, benefits, and services are reviewed, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each for both the employee and the employer. The authors also analyze methods for assessing employee needs and provide recommendations for national and local policies, along with directions for further research. Balancing Work and Caregiving for Children, Adults, and Elders will be essential reading for students and professionals in family studies, management studies, social work, sociology, aging, and public health. "Balancing Work and Caregiving for Children, Adults, and Elders is the most complete and informative book on caregiving I have read. It has a combination of attributes not found, to my knowledge, in any other text on caregiving. It looks not only at people with one caregiving role but also at those with multiple roles; it provides not only a thorough overview of the research, but also a review of a major study on caregiving; and it examines the personal characteristics, demands, resources, and sources of stress in each caregiver category. As a result, the research is extended in an interesting and exciting manner, enabling the authors to draw important comparisons." -Industrial and Labor Relations Review "This book provides excellent documentation - from an extremely comprehensive empirical study by the authors and an exhaustive review of previous research - for the need for more extensive support for employee caregivers. . . . The issues addressed in the book are clearly laid out. The empirical work is sophisticated and provides important information. It also presents suggestions about how employers and communities can provide assistance." --Monthly Labor Review "This is an interesting and important new book, which, for the first time, assembles in one place the most up-to-date information regarding the needs of employees with dependent care responsibilities. Unlike previous volumes, this book adopts a ′life cycle′ approach to dependent care, including the separate and overlapping demands of caring for children, young and middle-aged adults, and elderly persons. In so doing, it integrates existing knowledge and new research regarding the disparate fields of child care, elder care, physical disabilities, developmental disabilities, and chronic mental illness. . . . The authors provide human resource professionals, policy makers, and counselors with the tools to develop realistic, cost-effective policies and programs that have the potential to enhance productivity, alleviate role strain, and improve the quality of life for our children, our elders, and ourselves." --Andrew E. Scharlach, Eugene and Rose Kleiner Professor of Aging, University of California, Berkeley "[This volume] is without question a very impressive addition to the literature in this domain. The authors, Margaret Neal, Nancy Chapman, Berit Ingersoll-Dayton, and Arthur Emlen, represent a multidisciplinary team that has produced one of the most integrative and informative books on the issue of caregiving in the work-family context in the last decade. . . . This book is unique in two important dimensions. First, the findings and implications are based on a relatively large sample of employees (about 10,000), and secondly, the authors examine the critical issue of those working family members who occupy multiple caregiving roles. This book fills an obvious niche in the literature by comparing employees with responsibilities for the dependents of different age groups (e.g., children, adults, and elders). . . . [the first] two sections alone are incredibly rich in information regarding the impact of family caregiving on work responsibilities and are well worth the price of the book, but the third and fourth sections of the book are indispensable and should be "required reading" for those involved in studying and implementing kincare programs in the corporate sector. . . The entire investigation is couched in solid theoretical framework and the nethodological design is clear and concise. . . . this volume represents a quantum leap forward in understanding the complex dynamics of mutiple-role responsibilities for family caregivers. The entire presentation of the material from cover to cover is presented in a seamless fashion and could well serve as a text for a graduate level course in family policy." --Journal of Marriage and the Family "The results [of their research] and their analysis present a vital element in furthering our understanding of the interface between work and home. . . . The book deserves a wide audience and should be a reference not least to management students." --Ageing & Society

Problems associated with work-family conflict do not belong to individual families alone, but have a major social and economic impact on the greater community. This scenario also holds true across sub-Saharan Africa, as nations enter the global economy and rising numbers of women enter the workforce. One of the first resources to focus on this region, Work-Family Interface in Sub-Saharan Africa probes rarely-studied dimensions of conflict between paid employment and family responsibilities. It balances theoretical background, empirical findings and current and emerging interventions for an insightful and practical review of ongoing issues affecting working women with families. Coverage contrasts concepts of work and family between the developing world and the West and related social concerns such as gender expectations and sexual harassment are examined in the work context. The book describes a range of family strategies for resolving work-family friction and chapters end with policy recommendations as first steps toward remedying longstanding challenges. Among the thought-provoking dispatches: Ghana: Managing work and family demands Nigeria: Strain-based family interference with work Botswana: The social impact of job transfer policy on dual-career families Kenya: The role of household help in work-family balance South Africa: State measures toward work-care integration Zambia: The quest for a family policy As evinced by these chapters, progress is gradual and far from uniform. As a guide for future study and future policy, Work-Family Interface in Sub-Saharan Africa is a substantial reference for sociologists, public health professionals, public and social policymakers and administrators.

Inclusive Growth in Australia overturns two decades of assumptions that social policy is wasteful and a source of dependency. It reflects a global resurgence of the understanding that an active and effective social policy regime is vital not only for a flourishing society, but also for a strong economy. It explains this new paradigm of inclusive growth and shows how it can be implemented in Australia. Inclusive growth dismantles the idea that social development will automatically trickle down from untrammelled market based growth. Rather, growth must be managed so that it is employment centred, broad based across sectors and with a social security system promoting sustainability and equality of opportunity. The editors argue that productivity is 'nearly everything' when it comes to raising living standards. So while social policies will be about goals other than the economy, they must demonstrate their compatibility with an economic growth strategy. With contributions from leading national and international experts in the field including Marian Baird, Grant Belchamber, Gerald Burke, Saul Eslake, Roy Green and Peter Whiteford, Inclusive Growth in Australia shows that 'welfare state' spending is as much an economic investment as a measure of social protection. Written for policy makers, industry and NGOs as well as students, Inclusive Growth in Australia locates Australian economic and social policy within the most important emergent themes shaping international debate.