today's topic is caregiving and we want to talk about caregiving in very broad in general terms caregiving for our youngest members of society are richer elders and anyone in between and talk about how that task that that obligation that responsibility of adulthood intersects with the responsibilities that people have in the workplace i love that we are telling this program unfinished business stamped on our front covers because we are really dealing with some of the parents to be good mothers we want to be higher murat with our kids to be good spouses good wives we have to take care of them the caregiving needs of our spouses as as they run through various changes in their lives society second term in the senate after also chimp trimming the house she was a teacher a businesswoman she's a writer for the mother of three sons and her district includes rochester and some surrounding communities in townships in stark county she was involved heavily last year you audience members so we're going to do is ask east each of these palin members to share a few minutes of reflection on this topic how the present that to them personally both in their personal lives and their work lives and then we're going to open it up for questions i hope will be somebody carrying a microphone about your work in this realm of the intersection between caregiving and professional li during might have been the worst storm of the of the of the winter at that point so great to be here today and certainly we've done a lot of work and dad there's a lot of reasons right sitting right here but i thought i'd tell you  as the youngest one started first grade so i went to teacher and ran as three children in pretty short time came around i stepped out of the teaching profession for about ten years and i met them to reenter  profession it was a little difficult and i you know people wondered who right why weren't you in the workforce for the last ten years and so of course i was very clear and explained that i needed at that point to be home with my children now and i don't mean to say that's the right decision for everybody at all it's a wonderful thing about our society there's no run right answer about how we should be raising our families living our careers i but i was happy i was happy for that opportunity but i will tell you the rose that gap which i think some women i face today when we've stayed out of the work first because there are either needs or other priorities at that time sometimes there's a challenge of getting back into the world force skills change i mean changes and i think disease is the disease that is the most under recognized public health crisis we have what you might not know is it's a women's disease because sixty percent of the caregivers and  it's i would think if i asked to do i'd see a lot of hands of people who are experiencing risks right now how many of you are caregiving and some firearm perhaps the alzheimer's yes i'm so into it is significant and so  and then how are our policies supporting those caregivers and i think that we've done a right we did a lot last year on my right on the we said legislation to make sure that we could implement those things  that either could be implemented in our business community without causing unintended consequences for the very folks that we're trying to help and i think we crafted that very same you know that you have to thread and i think when we got that right i think they're starting right to do and going on is front is caregivers and the support for caregivers we certainly want right flexibility in our workforce and i rose a co sponsor intersection of the things we do in the legislature and there's legislate to reuters much of what we do is we're an out of personal experience and nancy why let me just say that's why we need more women in the legislature  minnesota is in some cases a lead in the nation where about following this fires the percent of women and i registration in iraq just nature but we still are not at what would be called parity i think we're making great strides thanks to folks like you and the people on this panel but there is still more work to do so i look forward to your questions i certainly just kind of give you a rough background here i if i have to leave it's because session is  so i'll stay here as long as i can and look forward to hearing from you thank you technology business we develop custom applications in fact we build things for you that you can't buy off the shelf we try to build the solution that meets your needs and set of you having to fit that square peg in the wrong  organization that needs to be able to address the employee need and that is my number one goal operating the company in fact they are my biggest asset so right do i not focus the most on my largest asset how this all turned out is the first year that i started the company i was probably operating the company in about four months and i get a call from duluth hospital letting me know that my father had fallen and broken his neck and i had to get there immediately i have five other siblings and i was the only one here in minnesota so i became the primary person contact it was quite up and down the road through the whole thing and i could tell you that i was driving back to the city to go to the office and i get calls from the u saying he had taken a turn from the worse and i'd be turning around thirty five w and back up and it was just a crazy time and i kept trying to figure out how am i going to build a company i run a company that i don't even know what i'm doing quite honestly and take care of my father all at the same time the biggest stress that i was having is how do i deal with this so that my employees don't know this is affecting me and that was kind of my lightbulb moment they are going to know and it's the same thing with my employees no matter what everybody says don't bring your personal stuff to be to your work is never going to happen everybody has to deal with their personal situations one way or another and that's going to flow into your business so hard you as a business owner handle that is where you're going to see the benefit when i decided to tell my employees this is what's going on this is what i need from you as a support and in turn you guys will receive the same to support from me if something happens to you and so i changed how i operated with my business and i try to find out how i could take away stresses from my employees so that they could actually feel good about coming to work and not have to worry about those small details the first thing that i did and trust me every year i have to go through this i decided i am paying one hundred percent of my employees medical dental so it's benefits and it's just not my employees i pay also for their dependents i cold everything so they do not pay anything ever in out of pocket that is something that i have done for ten years my bank doesn't want me to my insurance company should look at a cheaper method and i said no that is not going to change you come up with something more creative that will save my company money but do not take away anything that my employees get today so you've got to find something you can work with the other part that i have a roof that you have to give you a peeper of the ability to take the time off when they need it so you have to be flexible so find the ways that you can make their job flexible that they can do it by telecommuting that they can do it part time that they can do odd hours it doesn't matter if you can i doubt you can look at our room a creative society there is no excuse that we can't sit down and figure this out i have had an employee who his mother had in our ass and he wanted to be able to be there especially towards the end he worked from home right now that we have we have the technology we can do it and everybody's job some of them might be coming back and you can do it and you can be supportive today i'm looking at a new pattern we still have the counting of the p t o and you know everybody going mad and i have been doing some heavy duty research on this there's companies out there who have thrown away the p t o what they satirise people can do their jobs people their responsibilities and if you give them a responsibility as i take it and then run with it and if they know that you know right i just put in sixty hours because i had a deadline and i need to take a few do's after i'm going to do that and guess what we're not going to go check those three days we're going to do an open pit where there is no accountability and the time that you have allotted in an annual basis we still have a few things that we have to work out and that but i think that that is the next wave that we want to do and promote within the company and i do buy groceries every room we have we have a kitchen and you can go out to my website so tell group that com and you'll see my office space and we have a fair kitchen i buy food so that when my employees come in in the morning they can fix breakfast they don't have to worry about that when they want to have lunch they can eat their snacks they're healthy there is chocolate but there is healthy as an asian american woman caring for an aging parent in st cloud minnesota so as i tell my story i want to touch him a couple of issues that i believe are relevant to this summit  ethnicity is you ration me i'm mixed race asian which is a minority group within singapore asian american is a census term it's a sincere political term red lumps everybody mind my husband and i sponsored my mother's immigration to the us twenty years ago but this was expected of me and if so have you spoken about it a little bit in the summit but i have to add this cultural these communities that is the option given to them if you go outside of it you are stigmatized you are you know or you're not looking after your parent as you should so it carries that that burd all right so when she came to live with us she became ben the grandmother to my three children so she became a keg of which allowed me then to continue a full time job  after five years she became a citizen and i didn't realize at that time how important that step was for health care access a few months after her citizenship i noticed that that she was sort of carrying her shoulder you know in a funny way and sort of looking a little pained she does not complain she never tells me if anything is wrong with her whether or not this is just  a cultural and traditional i think do valuation of many asian women and we can expand that to other places in a very patriarchal system makes her feel better hurry mates and her care within the family i'm not important and it frustrates me that it continues to frustrate me but that is the culture she's coming from and that ninety years and i respect traditional healing but that's a plant bred doesn't work so i dragged her off to the yard and she was in hospital for about four days then i received a bill for about six thousand dollars and i'm going like you know i'm not living come in come i have a full time job my husband has a full time job but i was realizing this was the beginning of something that could easily get out of control what am i going to do for me to take both of us back to singapore and have her taken care of there because of subsidized medical but you also have to think about you know the trial of that goes with that she's no longer now a family member extraordinary stress at that time i was also diagnosed for mother is my first and only language when i sometimes in in certain cases people will just look at us and say can you speak english and then when you start speaking english  table but still i'm able to visit her that's that's what is happening a little story you know she had to have a twenty four seven care about three years ago she had the help button  pressed for help but she never pressed it because she was afraid that she would disturb the people at the end of that so you know it's like ok you yeah so that is a lot of frustration there some cloud as it's about seventy miles from here took me about an hour and a half to come in sometimes three hours if there are challenges on the feeling of isolation in these outlying places even with sound cloud and so that is another challenge there so i just want to add in terms of this predictive scheduling that happens i think it's really very difficult for caregivers and what about a state can give a tax credit you for those ideas thank you that was a big that was a big issue and it still is a big issue so i'm a little leery of amendments in general but i understand the necessity here and so i will tell you i'll give  great consideration for support the policies and i don't know if there's room on the bill or not i'll have to look and see but i don't know there's a i think that's what i thought it was kind of called out so i'm but definitely i'm i would think if i have an opportunity to vote for that i'll definitely be voting for that it's absolutely essential and we're just kind of high past the time but i do think amendments are problematic and so i do want to just kind of throw that out there but the imp employees are worried about caregiving and you think they're working for you believe me they're not the bodies may be there but their hearts and minds and their energy are with a lot of the ones who need them and so i just really tip my hat to pam and it's kind of like getting rid of seat time right that's what we're asking employers to do what pam is doing and let me just say i serve on taxes so i look at that tax credit always important i also serve on education health capital investment and jobs ag and real development so all of these issues kind of come to those committees so i know that i will be working for you and also  our all minnesotans but particularly our young girls who are coming up through these ranks and we want to make sure that they have all the opportunities that maybe some of us did not have and that they don't face the barriers that some of us did have so thank you for what you do and i look forward to seeing you soon hopefully before next year i met some of you the capitol so thank you so much caregivers i have a cousin who after caregiving from her mother passed away two years later from complications are pretty diabetes but we know and i and i also sit on minnesota board on heating and act on al and one of the things for caregivers is that often they neglect their own health issues while caregiving sat i guess my question is what can be done to help caregivers be more mindful of their health you know when you go to the doctor there i say are you safe in your home and all these questions could there be some sort of mandate that says if you're a caregiver are you taking care of your health or is there a notice that could be sent out  i do actually that's part of the os timers research and support act seven hundred fifty thousand dollars appropriate to better connect caregivers with resources also to encourage early cognitive testing but you getting up off their duffs and going walking we're just very mindful of ensuring that they go to the doctor they hear me harping all the time if you get your check up and you guys don't have to pay for this  get in there and do your do the right thing and you just as an employer or me particularly is i am always very conscious of when i see the stress level and if i see that that seems to be a little bit more than normal because of what's going on i tell him you know maybe you need a day off or just walk away get up and walk do something you have to relieve that because it just doesn't go away so just being conscious is really important as an employer if anything to add about the ability for caregivers to care for themselves then to be with a conscious  care for my mother i have to change from a full time job to part time job it was not possible for me to be away from home than a few hours a day and even  needed to be thick and senator more about that with any change in looks workplace policies enabled you to have continued in your room or is it just simply not an option not option not for the work i was doing but father in law died of alzheimer's my mother in law currently has it my mother's got dementia early alzheimer's and my sister's taken care of her in chicago and the rest of the family's helping my sister in law who's an attorney had to leave her practice to take care of my mother in law i said because of the forty one you never see respite care and i'm sorry that the largest state legislator left but respite care w meditation because all of these things will happen insurance costs so that they don't have a stroke or heart attack but respite there's a way if anybody's ever been under pressure twenty four seven let me know how you manage it starts really early because the stay at home parent isn't right away is like the one who stays home to take care of the elders and i just want to cry out attention to that and absolutely mental health issues are a big issue and has to be part of that conversation i was intrigued earlier today when we heard one of the i think it was jennifer moon say if we thinking to do this work i've worked as a person care system for my mother for ten years and i can tell you that over the last four years my pay has been reduced because i'm a relative and so i am encouraged to work from  leaders in the state offices value in perspective are people of color think we should and should not be doing and this is a problem throughout the entire country so how is this conversation  reversed by the courts and then to get rupert then reversed by the legislature the governor of the following session so that some put some message got through i hope the best continues yes hi and tell us more and from the university of minnesota and i want to ask pam how can we get other companies and businesses to follow your lead interview with regards to this and my support for this i belong to several organizations i'm an active member of the minnesota chamber of commerce and everybody who hears about my story is in awe because they are saying you can't do it and i keep telling him you can do it you might have to i didn't take a pay for two years to ensure that i did not take away my employees so it was just a constant you got to keep reminding him and i will tell you there are companies out there who do this there are companies besides mine i got several e mails and some calls from them saying thank you for being a voice and telling people that it's out there and with a little shortage coming is part of the part of the story that you emphasize you know so retention work you will talk about that for just about that is key there is going to be a major shortage in our workforce people don't understand how short we are going to be and and it's going to get worse and if an employer does not does not take that into consideration they're going to have people jumping ship and looking for that organization who is willing to cater to them as an employee and that will change things and another thing that you're going to see and i just was at a conference where the speaker of the keynote speaker said the fortune five hundred companies that we know today forty percent of them will be gone tomorrow or within the next five years because they are not making the changes that the small businesses are and they're growing so you will see it it was coming go go to small business i am again all right i'm not kidding you everybody thinks that they've got to go back into the large business and keep keep in mind that that is going to change the way of us coming and you are going to see it if you are struggling left for a small business that is doing that and if nothing else be creative and jump in and start your own business that really i'm not kidding you there are opportunities everywhere have you were down to just a moment  a final word yes i'm going to continue the conversation but don't let it stop and advocate strongly advocate for policies that really help give us if you really value women and