Maintaining Balance In Your Life While Providing Care At Home For a Loved One
You can make caregiver and career responsibilities work well together with helpful support and resources
Providing care at home for your senior mom or dad while handling your workload, raising kids, and taking care of yourself can seem like an impossible task.
Many family caregivers feel the same way. According to the National Alliance for Caregiving, a whopping 60 percent of working care providers find it difficult to manage work-related activities, resulting in cutting back on work hours, rearranging work schedules, and taking both paid and unpaid leave.
If you are like most of those care providers, you probably take your sick and paid time off to care for your loved one, so you do not ever have time for yourself and your needs. This can lead to burnout.
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To support working care at home providers, the government signed the Family and Medical Leave Act into federal law in 1993. This law prevents employers from firing people with medical conditions or whose immediate family members are seriously ill.
This Act is far from perfect, unfortunately, but it does give you some reassurance and comfort knowing that you won't lose your job if you take on the role of your loved one's care provider. Its main disadvantage is that it provides unpaid leave for people with medical conditions or those caring for a sick spouse, child or parent.
The Family and Medical Leave Act has you covered if you:
- Have been working for the same employer for more than 12 months
- Worked for a minimum of 1,250 hours during the past year
- Work for an employer that has more than 50 workers
- Have developed a serious medical condition or have a loved one with severe health problems
If you meet all of these criteria, you can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year, which you can use as you see fit - intermittently or all at once. Another benefit is that you also get to keep your insurance and other work-related perks, which adds up to your sense of security. While providing care at home for your loved one, you cannot get demoted or fired and you do not need to check in at work when using your time off.
In addition to this Act, you can also explore family leave programs in your state and check with your employer if they provide disability insurance, which allows you to get at least some portion of your pay while you are away from work.
You should talk to your boss about your situation and give them some time in advance to plan for your absence. If you cannot give them notice due to the nature of medical emergencies, it's fine too, as long as you notify them as soon as you can. Your boss may require that you provide them with some medical documentation, but you do not need to disclose too much information.
Being a full-time care at home provider can be overwhelming - you may need to perform a plethora of tasks, from meal prep to transportation, maintain two households, take care of your kids, and more. To find a healthier balance in your life, you should make use of all the resources that are available to you, including the Family and Medical Leave Act.
When you’re ready to learn more about getting started with home care assistance, consider Visiting Angels of Woodbridge, CT. Visiting Angels of Woodbridge, CT, is a leading provider of non-medical