Three Workplace Barriers Keep Caregivers From Working and Advancing

The awardees describe three constraints that can keep people from working or advancing: a shortage of child care they trust, employers’ limited visibility into employees’ caregiving, and the cost of care. Their responses target different parts of that problem. Coastal Enterprises, Inc. helps entrepreneurs establish child care businesses; the National Alliance for Caregiving is developing a voluntary way for workers to share caregiving responsibilities with employers; and United Way of Southeastern Idaho has launched a model that divides child care costs among families, employers, and a public or community contributor.

For Ally Forrester of Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI), a woman’s workday can depend on a question that is easy to overlook: can she find someone she trusts to care for her child? Access to child care affects whether women can work, how much they can work, and how far they can advance, Forrester said.

CEI’s response is to help women build child care businesses, particularly in rural communities. Starting one requires navigating two demanding roles: educating young children and running a financially sustainable enterprise. The women CEI works with understand children, Forrester said; its Child Care Business Lab helps them build confidence and business skills, and access the capital they need as new business owners.

Forrester said those businesses serve more than 1,600 children. CEI is now taking lessons from the Maine program to rural communities across the country through the Child Care Revolution. The figures describe the program’s reach in Maine; the national expansion is its next step, not an outcome already demonstrated.

The intended effect extends beyond child care jobs. A new business can create teaching jobs, Forrester said, while making it possible for parents to pursue careers elsewhere. In this approach, expanding the supply of care is also a way to make more work possible for families who need it.

Jason Resendez of the National Alliance for Caregiving described a barrier inside workplaces: employers often do not see which employees are balancing work and care. He cited the organization’s research that nearly 40 million Americans—one in five workers—do so. According to Resendez, more than half experience a negative work disruption, such as passing up a promotion or leaving the workforce.

Employers have built administrative systems around health care, payroll, and retirement, Resendez said, but have overlooked caregiving despite its effect on who moves forward or falls behind at work. “Employers can't support what they can't see,” he said.

The alliance is partnering with FamTech and Johns Hopkins University on the Caregiver at Work Visibility Project. The planned intervention is an open-enrollment module through which employees can share their caregiving responsibilities with employers securely and voluntarily. It is intended to give employers information they can use when deciding how to support workers who provide care.

That mechanism matters because the project is not described as a new benefit or a requirement that employees disclose their circumstances. It is a way to make caregiving visible, if employees choose to share it, within an existing workplace process. Resendez characterized the problem it addresses as the “structural invisibility” that holds family caregivers back. The project’s stated aim is to help employers make better decisions; the source does not report outcomes from the module.

Tennille Call of United Way of Southeastern Idaho framed child care affordability as a problem for families, businesses, and providers at once. Families are being priced out, she said, businesses struggle to recruit and retain workers, and providers have difficulty keeping their doors open.

United Way convened community partners through the Kids First Coalition to launch a tri-share child care cost-sharing model. The family pays part of the cost, with an employer and a public or community contributor each sharing the remainder. Call said the model is intended to reduce families’ costs, help them stay in the workforce, and support workforce stability and economic development. The intervention changes how the cost is distributed; it does not, by itself, establish that child care supply has increased.

Call also connected the affordability problem to the state’s broader economic stakes. She said Idaho loses $688 million annually because of a lack of investment in child care. In her account, investing in providers can benefit families and the wider community, while helping providers keep their doors open. The estimate was part of her case for investment, not a reported result of the tri-share model.