Stories of care: Community-engaged action research to address caregiver burn-out in socially vulnerable communities

Situation or Background
The COVID-19 pandemic caused high and prolonged levels of stress among families, especially those who were already contending with racism, poverty, and unstable housing. Even though the immediate challenges of the pandemic are over, disruptions to childcare and a lack of support for under-resourced families continue to cause distress and burnout.

Our Goal or What We’re Doing
The purpose of this study is to better understand the experience of pandemic-related burnout among socially vulnerable caregivers in California, and to co-create actionable plans with key community stakeholders for strengthening early family supports to further pandemic response and readiness.

Approach or Methodology
We utilized an iterative, community-based participatory process to understand experiences of caregiver burnout and identify early family supports that can support parents currently experiencing the aftereffects of the pandemic, and potentially prevent these in future crises.

• We conducted a series of storytelling workshops to describe the community impact of caregiver burnout. Workshop attendees will be broken into small groups of 6-8 individuals and asked to imagine a California family with small children facing the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• We summarized these themes into three stories that captured the common plots, challenges, and solutions that community members imagined. A few weeks later, we shared these stories with policy makers, advocates, and providers, and asked them to imagine different strategies that might make these stories come true.

Impact and What We’re Learning
The families we talked to told stories about real challenges, and imagined a number of ways that childcare could reduce burnout and improve their overall quality of life:

• Caregivers want high-quality childcare, with providers who are fairly compensated and well trained. They want to trust that their children are in a space that values their culture and aligns with their family values.
• Nutrition and access to high quality foods at home and at child care are extremely important, and something that parents and caregivers worry about a lot.
• Transportation is a major issue, many families feel like they are one mechanical break down away from catastrophe.
• The high cost of living impacts every aspect of a family’s lives, including their ability to access quality childcare. Housing and childcare are not separate issues.
• Families rely on mutual aid from friends, neighbors, and families to get by. Illness or other crises in their social network create major ripple effects in childcare.
• The existence of programs is not enough. Families need a way to find out about those resources and support accessing them.