ELDER CARE: Caring for California’s Aging Population : Corporations Are Facing Up to Need to Help the Helpers : Caring for elderly relatives costs American businesses $10 billion a year in lost worker time. One answer may be employee benefit plans that include flex time and counseling programs.

The Travelers Insurance Co. conducted a survey of its employees several years ago and found that 28% of workers over the age of 30 were providing some form of care for an older person.

The time spent by employees on such tasks as giving baths, running errands and driving elderly relatives to and from doctors’ appointments was not trivial, the survey found: Nearly 8% of the surveyed employees reported spending 35 hours or more a week caring for an elderly person--”nearly the equivalent of a second full-time job,” according to Andrew E. Scharlach, a USC professor who uncovered similar trends at Transamerica Life Companies when he recently conducted a study of employee problems at that organization.

According to the Travelers survey, the Transamerica survey and other similar studies, between a fifth and a third of employees over 30 are providing assistance to one or more elderly people. Workers spend an average six to 10 hours a week at those tasks, the responsibility for which they typically have to shoulder for five years or more.

Employees must shoulder these duties all the time, not just on their days off. Workers who care for elderly relatives report a higher than normal number of interruptions at work. They acknowledge that they are more likely than their colleagues to be on the telephone, to take unscheduled days off and to suffer physical and mental problems.

What is corporate American doing about it?

Until recently, not much. If they thought about it at all, top executives assumed that care of the old and infirm was, as it had been in decades past, the responsibility of family and government. It is government, after all, that runs the Social Security program for senior citizens and pays Medicare benefits for those 65 and over. And it is government in other countries--most notably Canada and England--that organized comprehensive, low-cost systems of medical and social care for the elderly.

The U.S. system grew up differently, however. Run by local communities, it is a fragmented amalgam of services for the elderly in which federal and state funds are turned over to local agencies with little overall planning. What’s worse, as federal and state politicians have cutfunds for social services programs, the elderly population of the United States has grown rapidly. The system as it existed in the 1970s and 1980s is likely to break down completely by the year 2000. At least that’s what some scholars and policy-makers are beginning to fear.

Any number of reforms have been proposed by lawmakers, public-interest groups and university researchers. Researchers at UC San Francisco, for example, recently issued a report warning that something must be done to raise more state revenue--higher sales taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and income taxes on corporations and individuals--if long-term medical care needs are to be met over the next few decades. There are 1.1 million state residents who need long-term personal and medical care, the report said, and there will be twice that number by the year 2020, many of these elderly.

For more than a year, bitter disputes in Washington have centered on how to finance a new and controversial Medicare catastrophic care program. The program, approved last year by Congress, was designed to help the elderly pay the costs of prescription drugs and extended medical treatment. In an effort to hold down overall taxes, however, lawmakers decided to finance the program by taxing only retirees. Many senior citizens saw that decision as an affront to the elderly, a grossly unfair system that places far too large a financial burden on middle-income people who have to make ends meet on fixed incomes.

If the situation is difficult now, what will happen when the Baby Boom generation gets old? Analysts have long predicted that when they retire, today’s 30- and 40-year-olds will bankrupt the Social Security fund and strain Medicare and other government health and social services beyond repair.

“All of that is why corporate America may have to do something about the problems. They are not getting solved by anyone else,” said Roy S. Azarnoff, a gerontology expert who has started a private business to help corporations help families of the elderly.

If Azarnoff, who lives in Southern California, and a number of other entrepreneurs, including Ken Dychtwald, a Northern California expert in gerontology, have their way, corporate America will pick up the slack--and then some. Private enterprise may do for tomorrow’s elderly what government did for the elderly in years past.

By some estimates, American businesses are losing about $15 billion a year because of the burden on workers who provide care for their elderly relatives. Those losses may increase as the size of the elderly population continues to grow and the younger population begins to shrink.

What the future holds for the elderly and their families is anyone’s guess. Already, however, the burden is beginning to shift: Companies are beginning to shoulder some of the problems the aged impose on the younger generation.

Just last summer, for example, American Telephone & Telegraph agreed with its two largest labor unions on a contract that includes a series of eldercare provisions. Hailed by labor experts as a model for future employee benefit programs, the contract guarantees counseling, leaves of absence and so-called flexible spending accounts that allow workers to set aside pretax earnings for the costs of caring for elderly parents or other relatives.

The company also has to provide referral services so that employees who need help in caring for elderly relatives will know where to find it.

Unheard of only a few years ago, such referrals are opening a new service industry that is expected to burgeon over the next few decades.

One of the first companies to offer such services is Work-Family Directions, just outside Boston.

The idea was to create a business that would help families find someone to do the things for the elderly that they cannot do for themselves--drive a car, cook meals, clean house and give advice, said Fran Rogers, the company’s founder and president.

Providing such services was a natural for Rogers’ company, which had made child-care referrals for IBM employees for several years. A study was done to see if it was feasible to provide such referrals for the elderly. When it was determined that it was, IBM decided to go ahead with the plan, even though there had not been any demand from employees.

Much to everyone’s surprise, as soon as an eldercare network was established for IBM employees, the demand for eldercare began to overtake the demand for child care.

“It’s just not something people had thought of,” Rogers said. “Clearly, employers, even forward-looking employers, don’t realize the need that is out there.”

A similar project is under way on the West Coast. Calling themselves the Eldercare Management Group, 10 gerontologists and an accountant have joined forces in Santa Monica to form a nationwide referral service. Among them are Scharlach, who did the Transamerica study, and Azarnoff, who founded the city of Los Angeles’ Area Agency on Aging.

One of the problems for the Eldercare Management Group has been to persuade corporations that it is in their interest to pay for such services, particularly in an era when health-care costs are soaring and most companies are trying to scale back employee benefits.

Employers don’t pay for the services, Scharlach said; families do. The cost of the referrals, he said, is “only a fraction” of what companies say they are losing in productivity from employees who are unable to concentrate on their jobs.

The service does not give advice directly. Telephone counselors working for Eldercare Management try to determine the precise nature of the problems and then map out alternative strategies for dealing with them.

“Eldercare management is an idea whose time has come,” Azarnoff said. “I confess I have heard similar predictions about child care for years and we don’t have much yet to show for it, but keep in mind there are some fundamental differences between child care and eldercare in this country. . . .

“The care of children has been, and to a large extent continues to be, a woman’s issue. But the care of the elderly is an issue that affects everyone.

“The head of a corporation, probably a man, is bound to have an elderly parent, probably his mother, and he cannot fail to see that there can be very real problems with getting old, even if he failed to notice there were also some problems when his kids were growing up. Because the company head can’t ignore his mother and because the problems he has with her are costing him time, he surely cannot help but realize that these are issues that are costing his entire organization time--and money as well,” Azarnoff said.

While Azarnoff worries about the future, others are dreaming about it.

Dychtwald is one of many businessmen trying to figure out how companies might make money on the elderly, rather than just spend it.

Three years ago, Dychtwald started a company in Emeryville, Calif.--Age Wave Inc.--an education, publishing and consulting firm to encourage the corporate world to create and market new products for the aged--not just for the elderly who are frail and sick but for those who are healthy and thriving as well.

“It’s becoming ‘in’ to be old,” said Dychtwald, 38. “Of all the people who ever lived to be 65 in the history of the world, half are alive today. . . . That means if businesses are going to continue to succeed in the future, they are going to have to start acknowledging that an ‘age wave’ is about to crash over the shores of America.”

Which does not necessarily mean a world filled with wheelchairs, rest homes and ill-fitting sweaters, he said. It means new products, new services, a new way of thinking about aging.

At first no one paid much attention to Dychtwald. Now companies all over the country are interested. Time, American Express, Blue Shield, Upjohn, McDonald’s--someone is on the phone every week, wanting advice on how to respond to the “graying of America,” Dychtwald said.

There was a time, said James M. Thompson, manager of consumer affairs for the American Assn. of Retired Persons, when business assumed that being old meant living on a fixed income, if not in outright poverty, and being “brand-loyal,” sticking to the same products and the same companies no matter what the price or the quality.

Analysts now call the 62 million Americans who are 50 and over the “golden market.” They control half the discretionary income in the United States and three-quarters of the financial assets.

And, if predictions hold true, the numbers will increase considerably with time. The over-50 group is one the fastest growing in this country, exceeded only by two other groups--those 65 and over and those 85 and over.

Studies used to show that growing old meant becoming chary of making unnecessary purchases--cars, clothes, houses, travel and other luxuries. Many experts now believe, however, that the so-called fiscal constipation of the elderly is an ailment of generations past. According to a new Washington newsletter, “Selling to Seniors,” tomorrow’s elderly will not only be willing buyers, they will be tough and sophisticated consumers, demanding products and services that are designed not for the young but for the needs and tastes of the old.

In fact, Club Med and other popular ski and beach resorts, once viewed as “adult camps” for swinging singles in their 20s, now increasingly cater to the over-40 crowd. Today, they offer child care. Tomorrow, if they are smart, some businessmen believe, they will include care for the elderly as well.

Commercials on prime-time television have already changed. Along with spritely commercials for diet colas, there are now advertisements for retirement homes, cosmetics and breakfast cereals aimed at the over-60 audience.

Stores and manufacturers are changing as well. Recognizing that many senior citizens have both time to shop and money to spend, Saks Fifth Avenue and FAO Schwartz have established “grandparents’ boutiques” stocked with high-priced children’s clothes and toys. The manufacturer of Cuisinart has remodeled its gourmet food processor with large, bold letters and oversized levers that make it easier for failing eyes and arthritic hands to operate.

Perhaps the biggest change has taken place at McDonald’s. Started in the 1960s as a hamburger stand for teen-agers on Route 66 in San Bernardino, this nationwide fast-food franchise is expanding its golden arches to welcome in an older clientele. And it doing more than simply serving early-bird dinners to old-timers.

In view of predictions that there will be 15 million new service jobs available in the next few years and 9 million fewer young people to fill them, McDonald’s has started what it calls the “new kid” recruiting and job-training program for senior citizens, which company executives believe may well be the nation’s fastest-growing pool of dependable service workers for years to come.

Like the president of Age Wave Inc. many businessmen would like to go ever further. Many companies are busy at working trying to create new foods, radically new banking systems, never-before-thought-of indoor lighting devices--all of which could radically alter the way older people live.

In a new book, “Age Wave,” published in February by Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc. in Los Angeles, Dychtwald and co-author Joe Flower list dozens of examples of the ways in which various industries are trying to respond to the changing needs and tastes of America’s senior citizens.

Today, he said, there are mall-walking associations and Sun Belt retirement communities. Tomorrow there will be new kinds of retirement communities--longevity complexes for health-food enthusiasts, mandala villages for self-development devotees, tron centers for video addicts, Olympic-style villages for athletic competitors.

“When the baby boomers get old,” Dychtwald said, “being old just won’t be the same.”

‘The American dream promised older people that if they worked hard enough all their lives, things would turn out well for them.”--Dr. Robert N. Butler, former director of the National Institute on Aging and now chairman of the gerontology department at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York.

‘When my generation gets old, there will be no negative stereotypes of aging. . . . Being old will be ‘in.’ Just as being middle-aged and having children is now. That’s the power of numbers.’--James M. Thompson, manager of consumer affairs for the American Assn. of Retired Persons.