Making Caring Count May Newsletter Issue 3#5

Trends and innovations

Patch Caregiving is the first and only childcare solution for America’s frontline workers. Most businesses often have to manage frontline work schedules on short notice when employees are unable to come to work due to illness or family emergencies. It’s a challenging task, especially when they know that majority of these absences are not due to the employees being sick, but rather because they need to care for a sick child, or an aging parent. Enter Patch Caregiving, a company founded by Stanford Impact Founder Fellow Sarah Alexander, that provides onsite emergency childcare for hourly working parents. The platform offers affordable, high-quality, and reliable backup childcare services regardless of income as an employer-sponsored benefit. Patch Caregiving partners with companies which subsidize the services for their workers, making its emergency care affordable. Employers can manage expenditure by limiting how many times workers can use the service. Offering subsidized emergency childcare makes businesses attractive employers, it also helps them retain staff longer and reduces absenteeism expenses. bit.ly/44S2QNC

AI in the care economy: People Power Family is a remote senior care solution for families and caregivers. In recent years, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the care economy has rapidly raised the bar on what caregivers can expect from tools and systems that keep the elderly in their homes longer and in significantly safer conditions. One such example is People Power Family, an AI-powered system of motion detector sensors which enable adult children to keep an eye on their aging parents from afar. The system detects falls and provides daily reports that track when elders fall asleep, how often they move around, eat, and bathe. It is preferable to other options, such as cameras, which are considered more invasive by many elders. bit.ly/44UoRLM

Pinky Promise: the AI-powered platform transforming women’s healthcare in India and making it judgment-free and accessible. Pinky Promise is a virtual AI-driven platform that aims to transform women’s health care in India and make it judgement-free and accessible. The platform is the innovation of Divya Kamerkar, a young entrepreneur who co-founded the company as a community service to women in need of easy access to reproductive health information. Their chatbot, created by reproductive health experts, guides users from a symptom to an answer for that symptom. Pinky Promise also offers consultations with gynecologists, pathology and tests delivered to the doorstep, and community support chatrooms. bit.ly/4dJPbMN

News that made headlines

Melinda French Gates to step down as co-chair of Gates Foundation, will pursue own philanthropy with $12.5 billion grant. Melinda French Gates, the former wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced she would resign as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in June 2024. In a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter), French Gates said it was a “critical moment” to protect and advance women’s rights around the world. Her support for organizations like Paid Leave For All, founded in 2019 to coordinate advocacy for federal paid leave legislation, has helped counterbalance other funders who have been slow to back fights challenging sexism in compensation and benefits. As one of the biggest philanthropic supporters of gender equity, Melinda French Gates has also given significant amounts of time and money to global gender-equality initiatives through her organization Pivotal Ventures. Founded in 2015, Pivotal Ventures is focused on various ways to increase women’s economic and political participation and power, such as closing the gender pay gap, recognizing and compensating care work predominantly carried out by women, and promoting women’s candidacy in political positions. bit.ly/3WP8wpK

News from around the world

The dilemma of the “sandwich generation”: Working, raising their children and caring for elderly parents, is at risk of burnout. Being part of the “sandwich generation” can bring about a multitude of anxieties and stressors for people in their 40s and 50s juggling the responsibilities of caring for both their aging parents and their own children. Continuous caregiving, particularly multi-generational care can lead to increased anxiety and uncertainty, causing caregivers to feel unsatisfied with the quality of life. This anxiety often tests their patience and stress-handling capacity, affecting their overall well-being. Stress related caregiving can only be effectively managed, not completely resolved. Family members should recognize the challenges and establish clear communication and open discussions around financial awareness to prevent misunderstandings or assumptions about responsibilities. Burnout and empathy fatigue are real risks, so it’s important to prioritize self-care and acknowledge one’s own unmet needs. Employers should also address this issue by creating supportive environments, whether through workshops or resources, where employees feel valued and heard. bit.ly/44Wenvu

Turns out this form of invisible labor, dedicated to family bonding has a name: kinkeeping. Mentions of kinkeepers started appearing in mid-20th century sociology literature, with scholars describing them as family communicators who helped the extended group stay connected by sharing family news and planning gatherings. Sociology and psychology researchers have broadened the definition in recent years to include things such as establishing family traditions, buying gifts for special occasions, coordinating healthcare and providing various forms of emotional caregiving. According to Carolyn Rosenthal, a professor emeritus of sociology at McMaster University in Canada, a kinkeeper is someone who fosters a feeling of “family solidarity or connectedness”. Essentially, a kinkeeper is someone who is the family glue. Over the years, one notable trend has persisted, which is that most kinkeepers are women. In a 2017 study, when researchers sought out kinkeepers, more that 91 percent of volunteers were women. Unsurprisingly, kinkeeping can be time-consuming and emotionally taxing. If you are your family’s kinkeeper, a few measures can help you avoid emotional burnout. These include articulating your need for support, having self-compassion and not forgetting to care for oneself. Remember to also be mindful if your partner or family member is the kinkeeper, as this can be thankless work. Acknowledging and expressing gratitude for that care can go a long way in helping to prevent kinkeeper burnout. bit.ly/4bowkFb

What we’re reading

When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others. Elissa Strauss (Author)

Behind our current caregiving crisis, in which a broken system has left parents and caregivers exhausted, sits a fierce addiction to independence. But what would happen if we started to appreciate dependency, and the deep meaning of one person caring for another? If we started to care about care? Drawing on research into parenting and caregiving, as well as her own experiences as a mother, journalist Elissa Strauss delves into the history and power of care in our lives and communities. When You Care weaves historical anecdotes and science with conversations with parents and caregivers to the young, old, disabled, ill, and more, revealing a rich array of insights about how care shapes us on the inside and the outside, for the better. bit.ly/4dHIjPO

What we’re listening to

Big Careers, Small Children: A podcast from Leaders Plus. Dr. Ana Catalano Weeks – Managing Mental Load While Balancing Career and Parenthood.

In this episode, Verena Hefti MBE chats with Dr. Ana Catalano Weeks, Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath. Dr. Ana shares her experiences of how mental load can be gendered and emphasizes that creating awareness is a part of the solution. This conversation delves into the dynamics of heterosexual couples and the evolving landscape of childcare responsibilities. Despite men’s increasing involvement in practical child-rearing tasks over the decades, women still bear the brunt of the mental load. This episode also explores the stigma confronting both men and women within the framework of societal expectations surrounding parental roles. bit.ly/3wzAf31