Caring Across Generations

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Caring Across Generations (CAG) is an American national coalition of caregivers and care recipients, with a mission "to change our culture and policy in America to value and support caregiving". CAG was founded in 2011 by Sarita Gupta and Ai-jen Poo to address the rapidly rising number of Americans in long-term care and the shortage of home care workers. [1] [2] One of CAG's original goals is to help create two million quality caregiving jobs in the United States. [1]

Contents

Origins

Poo had been working on care issues in the years following the 2007–2008 financial crisis. According to Poo, in the midst of a "job crisis [and] a care crisis", she and other organizers decided to start a project to create two million quality jobs in homecare, for the benefit of care workers and care recipients. [1]

Activities

CAG advocates for government assistance for the estimated 53 million unpaid caregivers, such as family members, in the US, who provide an estimated $600 billion of unpaid care annually. According to CAG, the financial and other costs of long-term care that families face is ""beyond a crisis point ... It's been a rolling crisis and we're at a catastrophic point." [3]

From 2018 to 2020, CAG participate in Lead Local, a research project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, examining community power and community power-building in health care. The unusual research approach teamed CAG and three other non-academic organizations, Change Elemental, Human Impact Partners, Right to the City Alliance, with university academics from Johns Hopkins University SNF Agora Institute, University of Southern California (USC) Equity Research Institute, and Vanderbilt University. Each party brought its own theories of community power-building, and all collaborated on research design and case study selection. [4]

The CAG-led Care Can't Wait coalition of social justice and labor organizations, founded in 2020, seeks to build a robust federal care infrastructure. Labor unions involved include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). [5] [6]

Related Research Articles

Kinship care is a term used in the United States and Great Britain for the raising of children by grandparents, other extended family members, and unrelated adults with whom they have a close family-like relationship such as godparents and close family friends because biological parents are unable to do so for whatever reason. Legal custody of a child may or may not be involved, and the child may be related by blood, marriage, or adoption. This arrangement is also known as "kincare" or "relative care." Kinship placement may reduce the number of home placements children experience; allow children to maintain connections to communities, schools, and family members; and increase the likelihood of eventual reunification with birth parents. It is less costly to taxpayers than formal foster care and keeps many children out of the foster care system. "Grandfamily" is a recently coined term in the United States that refers to families engaged in kinship care.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandwich generation</span> People caring for parents and own children

The sandwich generation is a group of middle-aged adults who care for both their aging parents and their own children. It is not a specific generation or cohort in the sense of the Greatest Generation or the Baby boomer generation, but a phenomenon that can affect anyone whose parents and children need support at the same time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caregiver</span> Person helping another with activities of daily living

A caregiver, carer or support worker is a paid or unpaid person who helps an individual with activities of daily living. Caregivers who are members of a care recipient's family or social network, and who may have no specific professional training, are often described as informal caregivers. Caregivers most commonly assist with impairments related to old age, disability, a disease, or a mental disorder.

A stay-at-home mother is a mother who is the primary caregiver of the children. The male equivalent is the stay-at-home dad. The gender-neutral term is stay-at-home parent. Stay-at-home mom is distinct from a mother taking paid or unpaid parental leave from her job. The stay-at-home mom is forgoing paid employment in order to care for her children by choice or by circumstance. A stay-at-home mother might stay out of the paid workforce for a few months, a few years, or many years.

Cabell Huntington Hospital is a regional, 303-bed academic medical center located in Huntington, West Virginia. Cabell Huntington cares for patients from more than 29 counties in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southern Ohio. It is one of the ten largest general hospitals in West Virginia. Opened in 1956, it is also a teaching hospital and is affiliated with the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Pharmacy. The hospital is also home to the Edwards Comprehensive Cancer Center, a three-story facility that opened in 2006.

Carers' rights are rights of unpaid carers or caregivers to public recognition and assistance in preventing and alleviating problems arising from caring for relatives or friends with disabilities. The carers' rights movement draws attention to issues of low income, social exclusion, damage to mental and physical health identified by research into unpaid caregiving. In social policy and campaigning the movement distinguishes such people's situation from that of paid careworkers, who in most developed countries have the benefit of legal employment protection and rights at work. With an increasingly ageing population in all developed societies, the role of carer has been increasingly recognized as an important one, both functionally and economically. Many organizations which provide support for persons with disabilities have developed various forms of support for carers/caregivers as well.

Family Carers Ireland is a non-profit organisation based in Dublin, Leinster.

Family caregivers are "relatives, friends, or neighbors who provide assistance related to an underlying physical or mental disability for at-home care delivery and assist in the activities of daily living (ADLs) who are unpaid and have no formal training to provide those services."

Thomas M. Engelhardt is an American writer and editor. He is the creator of Type Media Center's tomdispatch.com, an online blog. He is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of the 1998 book, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation.

Caregiver syndrome or caregiver stress is a condition that strongly manifests exhaustion, anger, rage, or guilt resulting from unrelieved caring for a chronically ill patient. This condition is not listed in the United States' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, although the term is often used by many healthcare professionals in that country. The equivalent used in many other countries, the ICD-11, does include the condition.

An informal or primary caregiver is an individual in a cancer patient's life that provides unpaid assistance and cancer-related care. Caregiving is defined as the processing of assiting someone who can't care for themselves, which includes physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual needs. Due to the typically late onset of cancer, caregivers are often the spouses and/or children of patients, but may also be parents, other family members, or close friends. Taking care of family members at home is a complicated experience. The relationships involved constantly shift and change, in expected and unexpected ways. The expected or expected changes can negatively affect physical health, emotions, social life, and spiritual well-being of the caregiver. Informal caregivers are a major form of support for the cancer patient because they provide most care outside of the hospital environment. This support includes:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Care work</span> Type of employment based on affection rather than immediate pecuniary reward

Care work includes all tasks directly involving the care of others. The majority of care work is provided without any expectation of immediate pecuniary reward. Instead, it is undertaken out of affection, social norms or a sense of responsibility for others. It can also be a form of paid employment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ai-jen Poo</span> American labor activist

Ai-jen Poo is an American labor activist. She is the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is also the director of Caring Across Generations, a national coalition of 200 advocacy organizations working to transform the long-term care system in the US, with a focus on the needs of aging Americans, people with disabilities, and their caregivers.

A moneyless economy or nonmonetary economy is a system for allocation of goods and services without payment of money. The simplest example is the family household. Other examples include barter economies, gift economies and primitive communism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hozier</span> Irish musician (born 1990)

Andrew John Hozier-Byrne, known professionally as Hozier, is an Irish musician, singer and songwriter. His music primarily draws from folk, soul and blues, often using religious and literary themes and taking political or social justice stances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floating Hospital</span> Non-profit organization

The Floating Hospital is a non-profit organization that provides healthcare services to medically underserved communities in New York City, both from its headquarters in Long Island City, Queens and from satellite offices in other parts of the city. Today it is a land-based organization, but from its founding in the 1860s until 2001 the organization operated a succession of vessels which frequently cruised New York Harbor and nearby waterways, giving indigent children and their caregivers a respite from overcrowded tenements. While they were aboard, the Floating Hospital's staff of pediatricians, dentists, nurses, and social workers would provide healthcare services to children and health and nutrition education to their caregivers.

Caregiving by country is the regional variation of caregiving practices as distinguished among countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mona Hanna</span> American pediatrician who uncovered the Flint water crisis

Mona Hanna, formerly known as Mona Hanna-Attisha, is a pediatrician, professor, and public health advocate whose research exposed the Flint water crisis. She is the author of the 2018 book What the Eyes Don't See, which The New York Times named as one of the 100 most notable books of the year.

The Stamford Organizing Project (SOP) was an experimental multi-trade union coalition in Stamford, Connecticut, launched by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1997. Led by labor organizer Jane McAlevey from 1997 to 2001, the project established a collaboration between four unions representing a range of service-sector workers, and worked closely with the community on workplace and community goals, chiefly affordable housing. McAlevey developed her whole-worker organizing model at the SOP.

Sarita Gupta is a British-American social justice activist and vice president of US Programs at the Ford Foundation. Her career has focused on workers' rights and human rights. She joined the Ford Foundation in 2019, initially as director of its Future of Work(ers) program. Prior to that, Gupta served for 20 years in various leadership roles at Jobs With Justice, including as executive director from 2007. During that period, she also co-founded and served as co-director of Caring Across Generations.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Flanders, Laura (April 30, 2012). "Can 'Caring Across Generations' Change the World?". The Nation . Retrieved Aug 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. "About Us". Caring Across Generations . Retrieved Aug 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. Ling, Lisa; Novak, Analisa; Luibrand, Shannon (April 25, 2024). "The hidden costs of unpaid caregiving in America". CBS News . Retrieved Aug 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. Pastor, M.; Speer, P.; Gupta, J.; Han, H.; Ito, J. (June 13, 2022). "Community Power and Health Equity: Closing the Gap between Scholarship and Practice". National Academy of Medicine . NAM Perspectives . Retrieved Aug 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. "The Coalition: Caring Can't Wait". Caring Across Generations . Retrieved Aug 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. Seitz-Wald, Alex (Aug 4, 2023). "Multipronged $50 million campaign backed by labor aims to prioritize child and senior care". NBC News . Retrieved Aug 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)