Universal Family Care: Big, Bold, Doable

On Monday, June 24th, we took a huge step forward in changing the way that we care.

Because the way we care for our loved ones in this country isn’t working…but you probably already knew this. If you are a caregiver, you know from personal experience how patchwork our current care system is. You’ve struggled to find quality care, been unable to afford the care your loved one needed, and/or had to take time from work or quit your job in order to care for a child, parent, partner, or yourself. 

These impossible choices strain us – mentally, physically, emotionally and financially. And when we’re unable to successfully cobble together the care our loved ones need, we often feel like failures for not upholding our responsibilities or losing the joy in our relationships. 

But in reality, the inability to give our loved ones the care they need when they need isn’t our individual failure. It’s society’s collective failure. 

That’s why last year, the National Academy of Social Insurance and Caring Across Generations gathered 29 of the leading experts in caregiving to address how we could collectively solve our care crisis. These individuals have spent their careers researching and developing policies on paid leave, childcare, and long-term services and supports. So it was a natural next step for us to pull together and document the best we can do on each of these fronts – AND to figure out what an integrated approach would look like, because no one experiences care needs in isolation.

Universal Family Care is Caring Across Generations’ BIG policy idea for an integrated approach. It’s big. It’s bold. Most importantly, it’s what our families need, and it’s doable!  

On Monday, we officially released Designing Universal Family Care, a 300-page roadmap for getting to UFC. We released the report with an event in Washington D.C., which drew more than 150 policy experts, advocates, allies and supporters to listen to panel discussions, and eagerly ask questions.

Here are some highlights:

And the discussion didn’t stop there – allies and supporters graciously shared Ai-jen and Ben’s op-ed making the case for UFC online, in addition to sharing out some highlights from the report, with #UniversalFamilyCare trending on Twitter:

This report is a huge step forward. It helps us to begin to formulate a solution that meets the scale of the problem, but there’s still work to be done. There are still questions to be answered. And we need your help in making sure this big, bold idea becomes the innovative feminist policy that changes the way we care.We’ll be hosting more conversations about UFC across the country in the months to come, and  working to make sure elected officials and candidates prioritize our families in 2020. So stay tuned, and in the meantime, check out the report, or get in touch to learn more or to suggest a way to help make UFC become reality!