Working Caregiver Iceberg

 

As a working caregiver, I have had my fair share of challenges when it comes to balancing 'work life' and 'home life.'  This started very early on for me when I was on mat leave. Before I could even think about going back to work, I first needed to solve the problem of finding childcare for my technology dependent, medically complex child.  During my mat leave, I worked furiously with our home care nurse and the childcare system to train early childhood educators on my daughters needs and build an integrated program. The success of this program led to the childcare winning an award for excellence in disability inclusion and allowed them to expand their programming to support other children with disabilities. It also helped to improve paediatric nursing education within the home care system to support other children with health technology needs. 

What I didn't realize at the time, was that I was participating in true engagement partnership and co-design. (This wasn't a thing 15 years ago!)

Despite these successes and all the skills I gained from this experience, my workplace did not see the value in my skills and was annoyed when I requested flexibility to attend ongoing healthcare appointments. Accommodations in the workplace are typically set up as temporary measures for temporary health issues and don't really work for complex or chronic health conditions.

The other day I saw this image about mat leave -what people see on the surface and what people don't see.

I started thinking about what an iceberg for working caregivers might look like and I came up with this:

What employers may see/think

• High performer, but is away a lot for appointments
• Stays on top of deliverables when working from home, but do they really need this flexibility?
• Does not cause internal drama with peers, but seems to have ongoing 'personal issues'

What employers don't see (aka AWESOMENESS)

• Working caregivers are excellent at problem solving
• They can thrive in times of uncertainty
• They have high empathy skills when working in teams
• They are always learning new skills and apply these to the workplace
• They are not concerned with office drama/getting all the glory
• Work can get done during atypical hours
• Work can get done anywhere (even at a hospital)
• They are extremely efficient (may even produce 3x the output)
• They will be fiercely loyal in exchange for flexibility

I recently decided to leave the corporate work environment because a) it takes too much energy to come up with answers to 'how was your weekend?' that are not related to my actual life (no one wants to hear about your 'weekend getaways' in emerg) b) it takes too much energy to try to get 'accommodations' (i.e. working remotely, time off for appointments etc.).  

The good news is that I can now bring my skills to projects that I feel very passionate about and work with really cool people!  YAY!

P.S. building a disability support program from scratch for your child so that you can go back to work does not seem to appear anywhere in the maternity leave iceberg above. Maybe we need to have an updated picture for these parents and caregivers?