Enhancing employability of older workers and caregivers through technology solutions
With funding from AGE-WELL, Canada’s technology and aging network (2020-2024), we:
- Deepened our understanding of the factors that enable or impede family caregivers and older workers’ employment
- Informed the development of Caregivers Alberta’s Work & Care education and outreach program for employers and employees with care responsibilities
- Contributed to the development of MatchWork, a cloud-based platform that empowers employment service agencies helping marginalized workers by ensuring it meets the needs of older workers and family caregivers
- Valued the economic contributions of family caregivers to the Care Economy, estimated to be between $97.1 and $112.7 billion per year.
Curious about this project?
- Read more about how this Alberta partnership aims to help unpaid caregivers find flexible jobs.
- Watch our TV interview on Global TV News Health Matters with Su-Ling Goh about our initiative that helps unpaid caregivers find flexible employment.
- Watch a catalytic conversation with team members about enhancing the employability of older workers. Featuring Roger Marple, Kenya Kondo, Laura Tamblyn Watts and Janet Fast, our panelists discuss how to help people who experience challenges to work: by redressing misconceptions, by co-developing technology solutions, and by advocating for better workplace and public policies.
Making Care Sustainable: Connecting People and Systems
With funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (2018-2021) and in collaboration with the Sustainable Care team led by Professor Sue Yeandle at Sheffield University, we:
- Wrote with Arlene Astell (U Toronto) a chapter on Technology and Care in Canada as part of the book Care Technologies for Ageing Societies: An International Comparison, edited by Kate Hamblin and Matthew Lariviere and published in 2023 by the Bristol University Press.
- Conducted a policy scan of carer leave policies in Canada
- Created snapshots of carer leave policies in Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Slovenia, Sweden, and the UK
- Compared carer leave and related employment policies across ten countries and their implications for working carers. Janet Fast, Kate Hamblin, and Jason Heyes edited the book Combining Work and Care, published by Policy Press in 2024.
- Theorized the well-being of caregivers to older persons as part of making care sustainable
- Built capacity among the next generation of international scholars.
Deepening our understanding of caregiving across the life course
We continue our longstanding interest in understanding:
- Family caregiving across the life course
- Health, social, and financial consequences family/friend caregivers experience and the factors that predict inequities in care work and its consequences
- Making visible the economic value of family caregivers’ contributions to the Care Economy.