Caring Across Generations (CAG) is an American national coalition of
caregivers
A caregiver or carer is a paid or unpaid member of a person's social network who helps them with activities of daily living. Since they have no specific professional training, they are often described as informal caregivers. Caregivers most commo ...
and care recipients, with a mission "to change our culture and policy in America to value and support caregiving". CAG was founded in 2011 by
Sarita Gupta and
Ai-jen Poo
Ai-jen Poo (, ; born 1974) is an American labor activist. She is the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is also the director of Caring Across Generations, a national coalition of 200 advocacy organizations working to tran ...
to address the rapidly rising number of Americans in
long-term care and the shortage of
home care Homecare (also spelled as home care) is health care or supportive care provided by a professional caregiver in the individual home where the patient or client is living, as opposed to care provided in group accommodations like clinics or nursing ho ...
workers.
One of CAG's original goals is to help create two million quality caregiving jobs in the
United States.
Origins
Poo had been working on care issues in the years following the
2007–2008 financial crisis. According to Poo, in the midst of a "job crisis
nda care crisis", she and other organizers decided to start a project to create two million quality jobs in homecare, for the benefit of care workers and care recipients.
Activities
CAG advocates for government assistance for the estimated 53 million unpaid caregivers, such as family members, in the US, who provide an estimated $600 billion of unpaid care annually. According to CAG, the financial and other costs of long-term care that families face is ""beyond a crisis point ... It's been a rolling crisis and we're at a catastrophic point."
From 2018 to 2020, CAG participate in Lead Local, a research project supported by the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, examining
community power and community power-building in
health care
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
. The unusual research approach teamed CAG and three other non-academic organizations, Change Elemental, Human Impact Partners,
Right to the City Alliance The Right to the City Alliance (January 2007 – present) is a social movement that emerged as a response to the mass displacement of people because of gentrification.
Right to the City
The right to the city is a concept coined by Henri Lefebvre ...
, with university academics from
Johns Hopkins University SNF Agora Institute,
University of Southern California (USC) Equity Research Institute, and
Vanderbilt University. Each party brought its own theories of community power-building, and all collaborated on research design and case study selection.
The CAG-led Care Can't Wait coalition of social justice and labor organizations, founded in 2020, seeks to build a robust federal care infrastructure. Labor unions involved include the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the
American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the
American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest trade union of public employees in the United States. It represents 1.3 million public sector employees and retirees, including health care workers, correcti ...
(AFSCME) and the
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
References
External links
* {{Official website, https://caringacross.org/
Caregiving
Social justice organizations