The Care Break

Many employers are facing skills shortages, yet an experienced and motivated workforce remains overlooked.

In this episode of The Care Break, Dr Rosemary Daynes Kearney speaks with Fiona O'Neill, founder of Count on Us Recruitment, about the barriers preventing skilled family carers from participating in paid employment and the opportunities employers may be missing.

Drawing on her own experience of leaving a management career when work could no longer accommodate her caring responsibilities, Fiona shares how she is challenging traditional recruitment practices and opening pathways back into employment.

Together, they explore:

• Why workplace policies and recruitment practices can exclude people who want to work

• How questioning established ways of working can reveal opportunities for change

• The potential of part-time employment to open pathways into the workforce

• Why employers need to reconsider how jobs are designed and advertised

• The role of organisational leadership and policy change in making employment more accessible

While Fiona's work is grounded in the Irish experience, the challenges she raises extend far beyond Ireland. Across workplaces and economies, people with valuable skills and experience face barriers to employment because the opportunities available do not reflect the realities of their lives.

This conversation invites employers to reconsider who is missing from their recruitment processes and what needs to change to make workforce participation possible.

Social Links:

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest Links:

Fiona O’Neill is a Family Carer, social entrepreneur & founder of Count On Us Recruitment. With a degree in Business Studies & Marketing, Fiona combines her lived experience with her professional expertise to drive change.

Through Count On Us Recruitment, she educates employers about the skills & value Family Carers bring to the workplace & the opportunity presented by this untapped workforce. She highlights the employment challenges created by the 18.5-hour working limit for Carer’s Allowance & works to create meaningful pathways back into employment.Her ambition is to influence national policy & build a sustainable, nationwide pathway to employment for Family Carers.

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/countonusrmt

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/countonusrmt/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/countonusrmt 

What happens to our sense of self when caring starts to take over?

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary Daynes Kearney speaks with leadership expert Angela Cox about her experience of caring for her mum with dementia and the impact it had on her life, identity and work.

Angela describes becoming a “human doing instead of a human being” as caring increasingly filled her life with tasks and responsibility. She also reflects on the leadership that caring can require, often without us recognising it as leadership at all.

The conversation explores:

• how continual change in caring can affect our sense of self
• the responsibility and leadership involved in caring for someone else
• why carers can lose connection with their own wants and interests
• the importance of maintaining an identity beyond caring
• the role work can play in keeping us connected to ourselves

For Angela, work provided a parallel reality during a period when caring could otherwise become all-consuming. It gave her somewhere to reconnect with another part of herself and, as she realised during the conversation, “my work was my anchor.”

A thoughtful conversation about work, care, identity and what can help us remain ourselves when everything around us is changing.

Social links

●     The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

●     Follow the Care Advocate onLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

●     Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest links

Angela Cox is a family carer, career Consultant and Coach who has spent more than a decade helping women build unwavering confidence, achieve sustainable career growth and become more visible without sacrificing their joy, dreams oraspirations.

Angela is passionate about challenging the idea that women simply need to become better at “coping”. She believes the conversation needs to go further towards creating careers and lives that allow women to succeed.  

Linkedin:     https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-cox-she-her-5b711b37/

Instagram under Angela Cox

http://www.yourability.ie - we are rebranding- watch this space

This episode examines why the conversation about care needs to change and why care deserves greater attention as a workforce, participation and societal issue.

In this milestone tenth episode, I reflect on the three key insights that have stood out across the nine previous episodes:

• Why work is often an anchor during periods of caring

• How connection shapes people's experiences

• Why there is no such thing as a typical caring journey

I also explore how these conversations have changed my own thinking to focus increasingly on how care affects participation.

Whether you are a family carer, leader, manager, researcher or policymaker, this episode invites you to think differently about care and its role in our workplaces, communities and society.

Social links

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Why Caring Impacts People Differently: Work, Care and Chronic Stress

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary Daynes Kearney speaks with Professor Stephen Gallagher about stress, caregiving, work, and the diversity of caring experiences.

• the difference between acute and chronic stress
• why treating all carers as one group misses those most at risk
• how systems and structures are major sources of stress
• the protective role of work, identity and social connection
• and the skills that caring builds that employers are actively looking for but may not recognise

If you are a working family carer, an employer, or anyone trying to understand care, this conversation is for you.

Social links

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest links

Follow Stephen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-gallagher

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qXyelowAAAAJ&hl=en

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary Daynes Kearney speaks with Damien Connolly about the reality of trying to support employees while also running a business.

This is a conversation about tension.

The tension between wanting to be a good employer and needing to deliver for clients, manage costs, and keep a business running.

Damien shares his experience of navigating flexibility, fairness, and competing demands in a small business environment. What becomes clear is that decisions are rarely straightforward.

The episode explores:

• the challenge of balancing employee needs with business requirements
• how efforts to support one person can create expectations for others
• why well-intentioned actions can lead to unintended consequences
• the gap between how employers are perceived and what they are managing in practice
• and the wider system pressures shaping how care is supported at work

This is a conversation about what it really means to try to be a good employer when the system itself is under pressure.

Social links for Rosemary

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Social Links for Damien Connolly

I am the founder and MD of Sakura Business Solutions, which is an accountancy practice with offices in London and Dublin, that offers outsourced bookkeeping and an ‘end to end’ finance team solution to SMEs struggling to combine the right mix of staff and finance software to manage their growth.

Separately I specialise in providing a Fractional CFO solution along with early business sale or exit planning to €1.0 to €10.0m businesses and have more than 20 years experience of working with SMEs.

To date, I have worked with more than 50 SME clients, helping them to improve business profitability, ‘free up’ cashflow, deliver commercial projects and mitigate business risks, while supporting better  decisions that drive consistent growth.

GO TO OUR WEBSITE - 🇮🇪: https://sakurabusiness.ie  

CONNECT ON LINKEDIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/damianconnollyfcca/

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel for more information, resources, FAQs and podcasts on this and other topics - https://www.youtube.com/@sakura-business

BOOK a call directly with us on - https://calendly.com/d/cmzn-6n5-zgp

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary Daynes Kearney continues her conversation with Sinead O’Donovan, exploring stress, leadership, and what is happening underneath how people show up at work.

A central idea runs through this discussion: the body andmind are one integrated system and both need to be cared for.

Stress is carried in the body, shaping energy, sleep, clarity, and how people respond day to day.

Through her own experience, Sinead describes how this buildsover time through small, gradual shifts that accumulate, particularly where there is ongoing demand, such as balancing work and care.

The conversation explores:

• how stress is experienced across body and mind together
• how the nervous system responds before conscious thought
• how sustained pressure affects energy, sleep, and decision-making
• how care creates an ongoing, unpredictable pattern of demand
• and how everyday interactions shape whether people feel safe or under pressure.

We reflect on leadership and the creation of physiological and psychological safety.

This is a conversation about understanding stress and whatthat means for how we lead, work, and sustain energy over time.

Social Links:

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest Links:

Dr. Sinéad O'Donovan spent over a decade as a corporateexecutive and knows firsthand just how demanding leadership can be. Sinéad's mission is to transform how leaders perform, scale their impact, and sustain it for the long haul, with energy left for life outside the role. Through herbusiness, The Leadership Biome, she works with organisations to buildleadership capacity by integrating human physiology into how leaders are supported and developed. Because the body is not separate from performance. It is the foundation of it.

⁠⁠www.theleadershipbiome.com⁠⁠

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sineadmodonovan/

https://www.instagram.com/sineadmodonovan/

A real conversation about leadership when care changeseverything.

Episode 6: What does good look like? Leadership wheneverything changes.

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary DaynesKearney speaks with Sinead O’Donovan about a real leadership experience thatbegan with a single conversation and how that moment shaped her approach as aleader.

This conversation explores how leaders can navigatecare-related conversations in practice, including:

• the importance of connection and honest conversations
• asking “what does good look like?” as a starting point
• understanding the cognitive, emotional and logistical load employees carry
• bringing individual learning back into the organisation
• and the relationship between care, stress and health over time

Sinead also shares her own experience of asking for support,and how leadership shaped that experience.

This episode offers a practical and human approach toleadership, grounded in real experience.

Social Links:

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest Links:

Dr. Sinéad O'Donovan spent over a decade as a corporateexecutive and knows firsthand just how demanding leadership can be. Sinéad's mission is to transform how leaders perform, scale their impact, and sustain it for the long haul, with energy left for life outside the role. Through herbusiness, The Leadership Biome, she works with organisations to buildleadership capacity by integrating human physiology into how leaders are supported and developed. Because the body is not separate from performance. It is the foundation of it.

⁠www.theleadershipbiome.com⁠

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sineadmodonovan/

https://www.instagram.com/sineadmodonovan/

When caring enters someone’s life, the path they expected can change overnight.

Episode 5: When Care Changes Your Path

Many of us imagine our lives and careers unfolding in a particular way. For family carers, that path can change suddenly.

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary speaks with Caroline Lawless about her experience of becoming a family carer and how that reshaped her plans, identity and confidence.

Caroline reflects on navigating the reality of being both a parent and a carer, how confidence can shift during long periods of caring, and how those experiences can also develop resilience, adaptability and new ways of seeing the world.

Together they explore how caring can change the direction of a life and how carers can reconnect with their own ambitions alongside their caring role.

Social links :

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest links:

Caroline Lawless is a qualified personal, business and executive life coach.

LinkedIn Ikshana LinkedIn

Website Ikshana Life Coaching

Instagram @ ikshanalifecoaching

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary is joined by Jean Evans to explore the role connection plays in sustaining confidence, adaptability and engagement with work over time. Drawing on Jean’s lived experience and professional insight, the conversation examines how caring and career interruption can reduce confidence, and how connection helps rebuild it.

This episode shows that connection underpins confidence, visibility and opportunity at work particularly during periods of caring and life disruption.

Connection supports:

• confidence and self-belief
• negotiation and boundary-setting
• staying visible and engaged with work
• resilience during caring and career interruption

The conversation also considers what this means for workplaces, and how supporting connection can help people remain engaged with work through periods of change.

Social Links:

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest Links

Jean Evans

Website: www.networkme.ie

Follow Jean: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanevans-thenetworkingarchitect/

Care, confidence and the path back to employment.

In this episode of The Care Break, Rosemary is joined by Amy Lavelle from Care Alliance Ireland to explore the practical and emotional challenges carers face when returning to work and the actions that make a meaningful difference.

Amy has numerous family members who require additional support and has gained an understanding of the importance of external support for family carers. Since 2021, Amy has worked with Care Alliance Ireland within their employment support projects for family carers. The aim of these projects is to offer individual and holistic supports to family carers who are returning to employment after a period of full-time care or alongside their current caring role.

In this episode we explore:

- the loss of confidence many carers experience,

- the barriers created by rigid job design

- why caring is skilled work, even when it isn't formally recognised.

- the importance of reaching out for support as an employer or as an carer who wants to return to work.

Social Links

The Care Advocate website: www.thecareadvocate.ie

Follow the Care Advocate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-care-advocate

Follow Rosemary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-daynes-kearney

Guest Details

If you are a family carer returning to employment or education or an employer seeking advice on family carer needs, you can contact Amy by email [email protected] or phone 085 2683589.