Migrant Live-in Caregivers Providing Care to Canadian Older Adults: An Exploratory Study of Workers’ Life and Job Satisfaction

Since aging-in-place is the preferred choice for many older adults, employing in-home caregivers to look after them is an emerging practice in Canada. The Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), established by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, allows Canadians to employ qualified foreign workers in their private residence, for care of children, the elderly, the sick and persons with disabilities. While the LCP has been researched from various critical viewpoints focusing on workers’ rights, relatively few studies have examined the program from other perspectives, and even fewer have focused exclusively on LCP caregivers who provide long term care to older adults. This study attempts to enhance our understanding of the characteristics of LCP elder care workers, and their older adult clients. It also explores the care-providers’ job trajectory and their job and life satisfaction over time. Fourteen migrant long term care workers were interviewed in 2009 and five again in 2011. In both the initial and follow-up interviews job satisfaction was assessed through open-ended questions and through administration of a scale adapted by Grau et al. (Journal of Aging and Health 3: 47, 1991). In addition to reflecting the challenges identified in previous research, this study provides a glimpse of the achievements, sense of reward and empowerment workers experienced through participating in the LCP, and its relative attractiveness to care-workers who often have transnational experiences against which to compare its benefits and drawbacks.