Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Qualitative Research

The consequences for family care of our aging population are rapidly becoming an important societal issue at both the macro and micro levels; the former concerned with labor market participation and the latter, constituting a globally increasing cohort, occupied with issues of employee compensation for paid-work and eldercare responsibility. The current study uses the Informal Care Model (ICM) to examine how the social context - family, workplace and community, support or impede primary caregivers' ability to reconcile paid work with eldercare under long-term care policies. Semi-structured interviews with employed Israeli caregivers aged 43-60 form the basis of the study. The results were classified under three pillars of the social context - 1) Community; 2) Workplace; 3) Family. Within each pillar, we presented the factors that support the ability of informal caregivers to combine eldercare and paid-work, then, the factors that restrict this ability. Based on the analysis we conclude that Israeli primary caregivers mostly rely on their social relationships at all three of these realms of life. More specifically, the provision of inform eldercare by working caregivers is positively affected by 1) the availability of public resources in the community the; 2) the workplace social network (colleagues), work arrangement/model (autonomy and flexible work); 3) the complementary resources from the primary family circle. Unlike, the provision of inform eldercare restricted due to 1) lack of comprehensive support service system for caregivers; 2) where they experience unmet multiplied responsibilities of work and care; 3) the suppress unending spillover on the family-care-work axis. The findings underscore a critical challenge for those policymakers tasked with leading social security legislation to secure paid work-eldercare compensation through new laws or regulations, thereby reducing or preventing a lessening or even a withdrawal from the labor market.