MBF Agency Honored for Best Practices in Backup Care Austin, Texas –Texas’s largest full-service household staffing agency can now claim to be one of the most successful providers of corporate backup childcare in the nation. This past month, Austin-based MBF Agency was recognized at the 2007 Work Options Group conference in Boulder as Most Valuable Provider for best practices in backup care. The award highlighted the agency's efforts to provide excellent short-term care for Work Options Group client employees and to promote the backup care program to leading employers in Texas. Work Options Group contracts with MBF Agency and more than 2,000 in-home healthcare agencies and 3,000 childcare centers in order to offer a nationwide backup care program to employees of many leading U.S. companies. “Our partnership with MBF Agency is incredibly important,” says Cindy Carrillo, Work Options Group founder and president. “MBF is the largest-full service agency in Texas and they focus on employing only the highest quality caregivers, which greatly enhances our ability to provide trusted, temporary care in all locations across the state. Additionally, MBF is forwardthinking and collaborative; the agency has connected us with some of the top companies in Texas and has helped promote the benefits of Work Options Group's nationwide backup care program. Work Options Group and MBF hope to grow together and continue providing this unique employee benefit to more and more companies.” Corporate backup care programs are designed to stem the financial losses and personal stress associated with interruptions in employees’ family care arrangements. Work Options Group provides corporate-sponsored backup care nationwide for children, adults and elders so employees can continue working and receive trusted, affordable, temporary care for their loved ones (when a sick child cannot attend a childcare center, during school closures for spring break or summer vacation, while a spouse is recovering from surgery, if a parent’s regular caretaker is unavailable, etc.). As a short-term backup childcare provider for Work Options Group, MBF Agency assigns its highly qualified nanny professionals to provide employees of participating companies with inhome childcare when a child is mildly ill but too sick to return to school, during school cancellations and holidays or when parents experience a breakdown in their regular childcare arrangements. The program is typically included as part of an employee’s benefits package, with most or all of its cost subsidized by the company. Overall, the cost to U.S. business from the lost productivity of working caregivers is more than $33 billion per year, according to the MetLife Caregiving Cost Study. The study, done in conjunction with the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, found that personal illness accounts for only 35 percent of unscheduled absences, while 65 percent of absences are due to other reasons, including family issues and personal needs. Consequently, backup care programs have grown more popular in recent years as companies have found them to be successful in decreasing unscheduled absenteeism, encouraging employee retention and attracting top executive talent. Currently, 7-9% of companies nationwide offer backup care as a benefit to their employees, while nearly half of Fortune magazine’s “Top 100 Companies to Work For” have adopted backup care programs. “Corporate backup care programs provide such enormous value to businesses and families, and that makes the recognition of our efforts in this area all the more significant to us,” says MBF President Kathy Dupuy. MBF Agency first began offering backup care in 2003, making it one of the early pioneers of this service in Texas. With offices in Austin, Houston and the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, MBF Agency is the largest and the longest established full-service household staffing agency in Texas. Since 1994, MBF Agency has placed high-caliber nannies and exclusive household service professionals in the homes of selective clientele across the state. |