Work-Life Integration for Families with Children &
Adolescents Who Have Emotional or Behavioral Disorders

Personnel	Introduction
Goals & Objectives	Major Activities
Tools /Products	Publications and Presentations
Latest Updates	Complete Project Narrative (pdf)

Personnel

Julie Rosenzweig, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator
Eileen Brennan, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator
Anna Malsch, Ph.D., Project Manager
Lisa Stewart, MSW, Graduate Research Assistant
John Conley, Mentee

Introduction

Family members face significant uncertainties as they endeavor to combine the responsibilities of employment with the parenting and child care needs of their children with emotional or behavioral disorders. How can they fulfill the demands of their work-role and feel confident that their younger children are in a nurturing care environment and that their older children are succeeding academically and socially at school? Will they be able to respond to their children’s mental health crises during work hours without their supervisors and co-workers labeling them as undependable and risking termination from the job? Can they effectively parent children with challenges and meet additional family responsibilities when workplace stress is high, work hours unmanageable, and child care unpredictable?

From family owned businesses to large corporations, work-life issues are a concern for employees and employers alike. The degree to which a person is able to successfully combine paid work with other aspects of personal life has been termed “work-life integration” (Lewis, Rapoport, & Gambles, 2002). Human resources (HR) professionals can play a critical role in facilitating greater work-life integration for these employees, their families, and their most-challenged children. Human resource professionals are the key link between employers’ policies and practices and the work-life issues that employees experience. For example, it is estimated that up to 94 million (or 60%) of employed adults in the U.S. workplace are eligible for Family and Medical Leave, yet only 40% had even heard about it (Cantor et al, 2004). It is the HR person’s knowledge and skillful implementation of workplace supports and benefits that help create a climate in an organization that is family-friendly, and accepting of employee diversity--including cultural, disability, and family differences (Society for Human Resources Management; SHRM, 2000).

Employment and related workplace policies and practices can both directly and indirectly affect parents’ ability to meet their children’s mental health needs. For example, financial remuneration and health care benefits facilitate the attainment of mental health services for the child. Flexible work arrangements provide the parent with the necessary access to school personnel and community-based providers during service hours. Family-friendly supervisors support parents’ availability to their children during times of mental health crisis. With such workplace supports family members can attain greater work-life integration, enabling them to more fully meet parenting responsibilities, perform work tasks, and take up important roles in their communities (Rosenzweig, Brennan, Burris, & Shea, 2004; Voydanoff, 2001).

The primary aim of the proposed Work-Life Integration Project is to improve the extent to which families of children and adolescents with serious emotional disorders have awareness of and access to employment-based supports that promote their participation in the workplace while permitting them to take part in family and community life and roles. It is our belief that HR professionals can play a key role in reaching this aim by creating employment-based supports needed by families, and by making sure that families are aware of the supports that are available. Therefore we have designed a research and training project based on collaboration with the largest HR professional organization in North America, WorldatWork and its subsidiary, the Alliance for Work-Life Progress. Additionally, we have secured the commitment of family members, HR professionals, and work-life researchers to serve on an advisory committee that will shape our project’s conceptualization and methods and assure that they are culturally relevant.

Goals & Objectives

The objectives of the Work-Life Integration project are:

• to expand our current conceptual framework of work-life integration for family members who have children and adolescents with emotional disorders, by including variables (such as family structure and caregiver strain) based on new empirical evidence.
• to learn from family members the ways in which they have worked with HR professionals to assure their ability to participate in employment.
• to conduct research that answers specific questions about HR professional practice regarding work-life integration, the reduction of stigma in the workplace, and the provision of resources and benefits needed by culturally-diverse families to optimally engage in employment.
• to prepare and pilot-test professional development and technical assistance materials for use with human resources and work-life professionals based on the research findings of this project and prior studies of our research team.
• to provide employers with capacity-building strategies that they can use to promote work-life integration for employees, to design effective policies and benefits packages, and to attract and retain a more diverse work force.
• to compile resources and provide technical assistance materials for family members and family organizations based on our findings.
• to disseminate these materials to family members, family organizations, human resources professionals, work-life specialists, and employers.

Major Activities

The project activities are summarized below.

• Explore work-life issues for families caring for children receiving mental health services through a secondary analysis of data from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and their Families Program (CCMHS).
• Explore the perspectives of both human resources professionals and parents on combining work and caring responsibilities and workplace supports when employees have children with emotional and behavioral challenges.
• Conduct a web-based survey of members of WorldatWork, a large national professional membership organization for human resource and allied professionals. 
• Design, develop a research-based training intervention for human resource and allied professionals on work-life issues for this group of employees. Conduct a pilot implementation and evaluation.
• Disseminate project finding to family members, family organizations, and employers.
  
  
  

Tools/Products

• Research Studies Conducted by Work-Life Integration Project Members
  

Latest Updates

Publications and Presentations

Brennan, E. M. & Brannan, A. M. (2005). Participation in the paid labor force by caregivers of children with emotional and behavioral disorders. Journal of Emotional & Behavioral Disorders, 13(4), pp. 237-246.

Bradley, J. & Huffstutter, K.  (2006). Managing work & family: Workplace issues when employees have children with emotional and behavioral difficulties.  Portland Human Resource Management Association, 14-15.

Brennan, E. M., Rosenzweig, J. M., Ogilvie, A. M., Wuest, L., & Shindo, A. A. (2007). Employed parents of children with mental health disorders: Achieving work-family fit, flexibility, and role quality. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 88 (1), 115-123.

Brennan, E. M., Bradley, J. R., Huffstutter, K., Rosenzweig, J. M., & Malsch, A. Work-life integration for families who have children with emotional or behavioral disorders: Focus groups with employed parents and human resource professionals.Manuscript in Preparation.

Friesen, B. J., & Brennan, E. M. (2005). Strengthening families and communities: System-building for resilience. In M. Ungar (Ed.), A handbook for working with children and youth: Pathways to resilience across cultures and contexts. (pp. 295-312). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Goshe, S., Huffstutter, K. J., & Rosenzweig, J. M. (2006). Flexibility: Current methods and practices. Workspan, 06/08, 25-28.

Rosenzweig, J. M., Brennan, E. M., & Ogilvie, A.M. (2002). Work-family fit: Voices of parents of children with emotional and behavioral disorders.  Social Work, 47 (4), 415-424.

Rosenzweig, J. M., & Huffstutter, K. J. (2004). Disclosure and reciprocity: On the job strategies for taking care of business…and family. Focal Point: A National Bulletin on Family Support and Children’s Mental Health, 18 (1), 4-7.

Rosenzweig, J. M. Brennan, E. M., Huffstutter, K. J., & Bradley, J. R. (in press). Child care and employed parents of children with emotional or behavioral disorders. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Rosenzweig, J. M., & Huffstutter, K. Parental employment while caring for a child with an emotional or behavioral disorder: Barriers and strategies. Manuscript in preparation.

Rosenzweig, J. M., & Huffstutter, K. Setting the standard: Family-friendly supervisors nominated by employed parents of children with emotional or behavioral disorders. Manuscript in preparation.

Rosenzweig, J. M., Brennan, E. M., Huffstutter, K. J., Coleman, D., & Stewart, L. How human resource professionals manage diversity: Decisions on flexible work arrangements for parents of children with disabilities. Manuscript in preparation.

Project staff presentations of research to local, national, and international audiences include the following:

• Rewards and concerns: Marital role quality and child mental health disorders. Poster presented at the 88th Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Irvine, CA (April, 2008).
• Employees with unique caregiving responsibilities: Stigmatization and disclosure at work. Paper presented at Work, Stress, and Health 2008: Health and Safe Work Through Research, Practice, and Partnerships. Washington D.C. (March, 2008).
• Families, work and community in a 24/7 society: An HBSE module. Presented at The 53rd Annual Program Meeting Council on Social Work Education, San Francisco, CA (October, 2007).
• Access to child care for  children with emotional or behavioral challenges: An essential  element of family support. Paper presented at the State Child Care Administrators Management Institute and Child Care Policy Research  Consortium Meeting: The Intersection of Research, Policy, and  Practice, Washington, DC. (August, 2007).
• Taking it on: Disclosure, stigmatization, and self-esteem. Presented at Building on Family Strengths: State of the Science Conference, Portland, OR (May, 2007).
• Assessing the business case for flexible work arrangements. Presented at The 87th Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Vancouver, BC (May, 2007).
• How human resource professionals manage diversity: Decisions on flexible work arrangements for parents of children with disabilities. Presented at Community, Work and Family II International Conference CIES-ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal (April, 2007).
• Caring for a child with a disability: Dilemmas of disclosure for parents and human resource professionals. Presented at AWLP Work-Life 2007 Conference & Exhibition, Phoenix, AZ (February, 2007).
• Negotiating accommodations at the workplace: Perspectives of human resource professionals and parents of children with mental health disorders. Presented atThe SSWR 11th Annual Conference: Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries, San Francisco, CA (January, 2007).
• Total rewards for workers with dependent care responsibilities. Presented at the WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference & Exhibition, Anaheim, CA (May, 2006).
• Managing Employees with Dependent Care Challenges: Human Resource Professionals’ Perspectives. Presented at The 86th Annual Meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Palm Springs, CA (April, 2006).
• Handout: Work-Life Resource Sheet. Presented to the Diversity Special Interest Group(SIG) of the Portland Human Resource Management Association (March, 2006).
• Families challenged by children’s mental health: Employment and community integration. Presented at Work, Stress, and Health Conference (March, 2006).
• Parents As Navigators: How Caregivers of Children with Mental Health Difficulties Find Supports in the Workplace. Presented at The 19th Annual Research Conference – A system of care for children’s mental health: Expanding the research base, Tampa, FL (February, 2006).
• Work-life integration for families having children with mental health disorders. Presented at The 37th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology: Family and Health and Social Care in Modern Society Session, Stockholm, Sweden (July, 2005).
• “Come pick up your child!”: Integrating work and family life for parents of school-aged children with mental health challenges. Presented at Building on Family Strengths: Research & Services in Support of Children and their Families Conference, Portland, OR (June, 2005).
• Families in context: Work-life integration experiences of parents of children with mental health disabilities. Paper presented at the First International Conference on Community, Work, & Family: Change & Transformation, Manchester, UK (March, 2005).
• Supporting families of children with serious emotional or behavioral disorders in a 24\7 world. Presented at the Georgetown Training Institutes, San Francisco, CA (June, 2004).