Working Family Carers of Older Dependents in Europe – Between Labour Market Demands and Intergenerational Solidarity/Conflict

The central objective of this series of 3 workshops with participants from 15 European countries was to develop a research project on family carers trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of employment and family care and to build a network of potential research collaborators.

The first workshop mainly reflected the less well-known situation in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland) and compared it with ‘old’ EU member states in Western (the UK) and Southern Europe (Portugal). The second workshop focused on developing research questions and methodology of the research project in the making, informed by a keynote presentation by members of the EUROFAMCARE project. The final meeting extended the perspective of the series by emphasizing employers’ position on the reconciliation problematic and discussed a first draft of the research proposal. 

  Researchers: Andreas Hoff, George Leeson, Angelika Kaiser
  Funding: John Fell Oxford University Press Foundation

Between Job and Care: Conflict or Opportunity? A Strategy for Securing Sustainable Future Care and Productivity Potentials in an Ageing Society – A European Comparison

This research project (Principal Investigator: Professor Monika Reichert, Dortmund University, Germany) will be carried out in collaboration with 5 European partner institutions for the duration of 2 years in 2009/2010. The research aims to show that the reconciliation of employment and family care is possible if accompanied by support measures at enterprise and social policy level. This work compares individual and enterprise based reconciliation strategies in four European countries (Germany, Italy, Poland, and the UK). Expert interviews with representatives of employers/trade unions and documentary analyses of collective bargaining and enterprise agreements, as well as international ‘examples of best practice’ are the data base of the enterprise-based study. The carer perspective is analysed using secondary analysis of available European data (EUROFAMCARE, SHARE/ELSA) and the collection of qualitative data.

  Researchers: Andreas Hoff, Kate Hamblin
  Funding:  Volkswagen Foundation

> Download 'Carers@work' - Summary Report  [pdf]