Working carers in Poland – successful strategies for reconciliation of work and care of an older adult

Abstract

This paper focuses on the possible methods and measures that individual Polish informal carers utilize in order to manage the double burden of work and care. The strategies they use are understood as conscious and systematized ways of tackling the everyday obligations in order to successfully reconcile different duties. Based on interviews with working carers (N=58), the strategies they invented (either intentionally or accidentally) were intended to remedy the stress resulting from multiple conflict situations in everyday life. These strategies were individual approaches of every carer to the often unique situation of reconciliation, which could nevertheless form a set of practical advice for the benefit of working carers in Poland, but also in other countries.