Paid To Care

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.

Care for Australia's children and elderly is provided in a mixed economy, in which for-profit providers are playing an increasingly important role alongside more traditional government and non-government organisations. Does the growth of for-profit provision affect the quality of services or of jobs in paid care? Does it change the political dynamics of the social care sector in contemporary welfare states? How might service users, their families, and organisations work together to sustain and improve the quality of care services? What theories and evidence help us to understand the process and consequences of the shift toward for-profit provision of social care? In nine chapters by leading researchers, this book explores these and other questions, to inform policy and practice in this key field of social policy.

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.

The rapid growth of home health care has raised many unsolved issues and will have consequences that are far too broad for any one group to analyze in their entirety. Yet a major influence on the safety, quality, and effectiveness of home health care will be the set of issues encompassed by the field of human factors research-the discipline of applying what is known about human capabilities and limitations to the design of products, processes, systems, and work environments. To address these challenges, the National Research Council began a multidisciplinary study to examine a diverse range of behavioral and human factors issues resulting from the increasing migration of medical devices, technologies, and care practices into the home. Its goal is to lay the groundwork for a thorough integration of human factors research with the design and implementation of home health care devices, technologies, and practices. On October 1 and 2, 2009, a group of human factors and other experts met to consider a diverse range of behavioral and human factors issues associated with the increasing migration of medical devices, technologies, and care practices into the home. This book is a summary of that workshop, representing the culmination of the first phase of the study.

'Balancing paid work and family life remains a significant challenge; indeed, the challenges are intensifying as economic austerity threatens the pursuit of gender equality. This excellent book provides extensive justifications for laws and policies which encourage and facilitate the reconciliation of paid work, family life and care-giving. It provides a wealth of data, from a number of jurisdictions, and examines recent trends. It is vital that this area of law and policy is protected and developed and this book plays an important role in that process.' – Clare McGlynn, Durham University, UK This unique selection of chapters brings together researchers from a variety of academic disciplines to explore aspects of law's engagement with working families. It connects academic debate with policy proposals through an integrated set of approaches and perspectives. Families, Care-giving and Paid Work offers an original approach to a very topical area. Not only does it consider the limitations of law in relation to the regulation of care-giving and workplace relationships, but it is premised upon a re-consideration of law's potential and engages with suggested strategies for bringing about long-term social change. Offering a range of analyses, this book will strongly appeal to policymakers and practitioners involved with promoting work and family issues, students in labour and employment studies, law and social policy, as well as academics interested in work and family reconciliation issues, or gender and law issues.

The report analyses the ways in which unpaid care work is recognised and organised, the extent and quality of care jobs and their impact on the well-being of individuals and society. A key focus of this report is the persistent gender inequalities in households and the labour market, which are inextricably linked with care work. These gender inequalities must be overcome to make care work decent and to ensure a future of decent work for both women and men. The report contains a wealth of original data drawn from over 90 countries and details transformative policy measures in five main areas: care, macroeconomics, labour, social protection and migration. It also presents projections on the potential for decent care job creation offered by remedying current care work deficits and meeting the related targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The United States faces a growing crisis in care. The number of people needing care is growing while the ranks of traditional caregivers have shrunk. The status of care workers is a critical concern. Evelyn Nakano Glenn offers an innovative interpretation of care labor in the United States by tracing the roots of inequity along two interconnected strands: unpaid caring within the family; and slavery, indenture, and other forms of coerced labor. By bringing both into the same analytic framework, she provides a convincing explanation of the devaluation of care work and the exclusion of both unpaid and paid care workers from critical rights such as minimum wage, retirement benefits, and workers' compensation. Glenn reveals how assumptions about gender, family, home, civilization, and citizenship have shaped the development of care labor and been incorporated into law and social policies. She exposes the underlying systems of control that have resulted in womenÑespecially immigrants and women of colorÑperforming a disproportionate share of caring labor. Finally, she examines strategies for improving the situation of unpaid family caregivers and paid home healthcare workers. This important and timely book illuminates the source of contradictions between American beliefs about the value and importance of caring in a good society and the exploitation and devalued status of those who actually do the caring.