Session: Working Family Caregivers (Society for Social Work and Research 15th Annual Conference: Emerging Horizons for Social Work Research)

Integrating work and family responsibilities into one's life is challenging for employees, even when all their family members are in good health and developing typically. However, when employees are caring for children or adults with special health care needs or mental health difficulties, it is especially hard to find and sustain a set of relevant supports necessary to facilitate integration across domains. This symposium's three papers examine points of intervention where social workers are needed to assist employed family members with exceptional caregiving responsibilities. The first paper reports the results of an experimental intervention study in which social workers provided telephone consultation to one group of low-income hospital employees who were parents of children with asthma, while two equivalent groups received only usual union services, or union services plus a brochure on workplace supports. For all the caregivers, higher care demands interfered with work requirements and were associated with lower quality of life. Telephone consultation resulted in parent reports of lower levels of conflict and improved quality of life at follow-up. In the second paper, researchers describe a quasi-experimental workplace training intervention study that aimed at improving human resource practices with employees raising children with disabilities. Using a research-based manual, social work trainers collaborated with a major corporation to deliver online interactive sessions that improved HR professionals' knowledge of disability care, and their confidence that they could carry out best practices. Greater gains in knowledge were reported for participants who had no prior disability awareness training, and for those with less HR experience. The final paper uses data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce to develop structural equation group models predicting work satisfaction for parents providing exceptional care for children or adults with disabilities, and for parents with typical care responsibilities. Some dramatic differences were found between the groups, with informal supports and positive workplace culture being more important predictors of work satisfaction for employees engaged in exceptional, rather than typical, care. Those parents with typical care responsibilities had work-family conflict as an important mediator of work satisfaction, unlike parents providing exceptional care. Together, the findings break new ground by highlighting the intersection of work-life integration, exceptional care responsibilities, human resource practices, and disabilities. The discussant will summarize the common themes of the three studies, examine their limitations, and explore the capacity-building social work interventions that can assist family members providing exceptional care to remain employed and to have the level of income that raising a child or caring for an adult with a disability demands. The symposium will conclude with audience discussion of the studies and the future direction of research on employed exceptional caregivers and the supports that they need.