In its response, AGE observed that carer’s leave legislation would enable a significant number of older workers to better balance work with their care responsibilities for their dependent relatives. This applies in particular to older women. There is a clear need for specific legislation to be introduced as balancing paid work and informal care extends far beyond those responsibilities typically associated with other forms of family related leave such as parental leave, leave for urgent family reasons etc. However, we consider that a proposal for an initiative on carers’ leave should also be accompanied by non-legislative measures and that a broad approach should be taken to defining caring responsibilities and support needs.
In concrete terms, we suggested that this type of leave should be available to:
- entitle the worker to take a reasonable amount of time off to deal with an unexpected or sudden problem concerning a member of their immediate family or household and to make any necessary longer term arrangements; and
- that a certain amount of leave should also be available for anticipated care obligations, enabling the worker to use this leave as a tool to help them manage long-term informal care duties for a dependent relative;
We also suggested that parental leave provisions should be extended to grand-parents willing to devote time off work to look after a grandchild.
For AGE, a key added value of carers’ leave legislation is that it would be open to all workers irrespective of age who have heavy family caring responsibilities other than ordinary child minding duties. This is particularly pertinent today as we are seeing increasing numbers of women who wish or need to continue working until a later age but are faced with responsibilities towards their ageing parents which force them out of the labour market. It would also help acknowledge the valuable contribution that informal carers make to society.
This consultation is only the beginning of the process. So any additional information you have will be useful for AGE in this developing debate, so please don’t hesitate to send any comments or relevant material to Rachel Buchanan, Policy Officer for Employment and Non-Discrimination, at Cette adresse email est protégée contre les robots des spammeurs, vous devez activer Javascript pour la voir. .
