Working From Home While Caring: What Nobody Tells You About Never Being in It 100%

This is a personal account from Steve, the founder of The Care Compass. It touches on a fall during a caring period, and on end-of-life decline, so read it when you have a moment to sit with it if either is close to home right now.

By Steve Evans, Founder of The Care Compass

People assume working from home while caring for a parent means you're covering both. You're not. That's the bit nobody tells you. You're never fully in either one.

I'd be on a work call, and Mum would start to wander. One time she fell while I was mid-call. I had to abandon it there and then. It wasn't the falling itself that got to me over time — it was never being able to settle. Every call, every meeting, some part of me was listening for the next room, not the person talking to me.

Telling my team early, and why I did it

From the outset, I told my team what caring for both of them might look like — the appointments, the scans, the results, the possibility of things getting worse. I didn't actually know what to expect myself half the time. But I wanted them to understand I wasn't slacking, wasn't stepping back. I felt guilty even needing to say that, if I'm honest.

Everyone had to step up. We built clear roles and rotas, planned as far ahead as we could. Family covered weekends while I travelled back and forth to York. Some days I'd bring Dad with me, just to give him a change of scene.

When working from home stopped being enough

Eventually, as Dad's health declined further and he moved towards end of life, working from home around it wasn't sustainable any more. I asked for, and took, several weeks off work on the sick. That's worth saying plainly, because there's a point past which "managing it alongside work" isn't the honest answer any more — the honest answer is stopping.

Why this is worth saying out loud

None of this made me a bad employee or a bad son. It made me someone trying to hold two things together for as long as it was actually possible, then recognising when it wasn't. If you're doing this right now — on a call while listening for a fall, planning a day around whether someone can get out of bed — you're not failing at either. And if you reach the point where it genuinely isn't possible any more, that's not failing either. That's just the honest shape of it.

A word from The Care Compass

If any of this sounds familiar, our guide to holding down a job while caring for a parent covers the practical side — your rights, flexible working, and talking to your employer. This piece is the other half of it: what it actually feels like day to day, and permission to know when enough is enough.

You don’t have to navigate it alone.