Caring for Dear Old Dad Gets a Little Easier

Lee also used a free consultant provided by Freddie Mac. The consultant did research and answered questions by e-mail or phone and found the home Lee's grandfather-in-law ultimately moved into last week. Employees can use the same service for child-care advice, she said. She used up her entire 20-day allowance.

Verizon Wireless has been providing employees with seminars where financial advisers and legal staff discuss elder-care issues and options.

The company also began to offer backup care for its workers' children and parents in 2005 after it noticed that many employees took sick days to care for a parent, said Jeremy Bruce, manager of employee relations. Full-time workers are allowed 80 hours a year in backup care, and part-time workers get up to 40 hours a year. In-home care for older people or children is $4 an hour; the rate is $2 an hour for children who are dropped off in a day-care facility.

Employers with elder-care benefits hire companies that contract with a third party that provides in-home aides. Verizon's provider, Work Options Group, partners with 2,000 agencies that hire aides -- nurses and others who are trained in geriatric care -- after background checks. Last year, Verizon employees used about 28,000 hours; 9,800 employees are registered to use the benefit.

Sherrie Rice said she and her two brothers would have had to take time off to care for her parents if it weren't for the perk. All three work for Verizon Wireless in Salt Lake City. Her mother is bedridden, and her father is the primary caretaker. But when his diabetes led to a major foot problem in January, she and her brothers had to figure out who would take him to weekly treatments and help both parents function. Through the Verizon program, they soon had an aide come to their parents' house to help. "It allowed us to continue to work our shifts, but it provided my parents with the assistance they needed on days when one of us didn't have a day off," Rice said.

Princeton University began to use Work Options for child or elder care a year ago. Twenty percent of employees who use it have requested it for adult or elder care, higher than the university expected.

The Family and Medical Leave Act allows some employees to take time off to care for a sick parent, but there are restrictions. It's unpaid leave, a company has to provide it only if it has 50 or more employees, and an employee can use it only after being with the company for a year or more. But other companies give workers an FMLA equivalent from the first day of employment, Taylor said.

"Historically, no one really asked for elder care. People expected help for themselves and their children, but they never thought about their parents," Taylor said. "And that's changing."