Caregivers are core to our recovery.

Now is the time to care for them, the way they care for us.

#CARECANTWAIT

Our fragmented care infrastructure drove millions of women out of the workforce – during the pandemic, and well before it. And most of the care workers we trust to provide support for our loved ones and ourselves are women of color, who can’t afford to care for their own families.

To recover and rebuild, we must invest in our nation’s caregivers. Join us and our partners in urging Congress to pass paid family and medical leave, affordable, quality childcare, expand home and community based services for older adults and people with disabilities, and create millions of care jobs. Because our families’ well-being can’t wait, which means care can’t wait either.

Our demands are:

1. The investment of $400 billion in Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services to create over one million quality, union protected direct care jobs, expanding access to home and community-based services to people with disabilities and aging adults, and support unpaid family caregivers so they can re-join the labor force.
2. Passage of the Child Care for Working Families Act to ensure that no family pays more than 7% of their income for child care, invest in building an increased supply of high quality care, and increase workforce compensation and support, including a pathway to pay parity for early educators.
3. Passage of Paid Family and Medical Leave Legislation that would ensure all working people have access to at least 12 weeks of paid leave to bond with a new child, address a personal or family related illness, or handle needs that arise from a military deployment.

In the Summer of 2020, Caring Across Generations organized a national table of leading organizations and experts to address the lack of a comprehensive care infrastructure, including childcare, paid family and medical leave (PFML), and long-term services and supports (LTSS). Together we produced a paper outlining the care solutions that families of all kinds would need, specifically noting how BIPOC, disabled and immigrant women’s experiences must be central to our economic recovery from the pandemic and beyond.

In March 2021, we officially launched Care Can’t Wait to make this care infrastructure proposal a reality.