Can you keep your job and health while meeting your caregiving responsibilities? Does the Family and Medical Leave Act help?

The Challenge and Inequality of Care focuses on informal (unpaid) caregiving in the United States. It challenges players to try to keep their jobs and their health while meeting their caregiving challenges.

Even though the game focuses on unpaid care that people perform in families, it transforms the classroom into a hospital workplace in the United States. Players become employees--mainly in the hospital units that are not patient-facing, e.g., janitorial, food service, legal, and so on.

The Challenge and Inequality of Care provides players opportunities to learn about the interaction between their needs to give and receive care, the demands of paid work, and the main federal public policy around family and medical leave: the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The game pushes players to examine how these factors interact with different worker demographics, familial configurations, and care demands. It encourages players to consider whether and in what ways the status quo is unfair and/or uncaring.

Class Size and Scalability 
This game is recommended for classes with 16-28 students. 

Class Time
For this short game, 1 setup "session" of 20 minutes is required, with the rest of the game being played over three 50-minute sessions or two 75-minute sessions.

Assignments
You can adjust the assignments based on the desired learning outcomes of your class. The game includes an oral debrief, but instructors can choose whether or not to add a written debrief assignment to supplement the oral debrief. Most roles are required to speak informally in small groups, but certain roles can be assigned to further minimize speaking.