No more waiting: for caregiver support

Zoomer | February 21st, 2007

They do everything from providing companionship, to cooking, housekeeping and assisting with activities of daily living, to providing health care assistance. Family caregivers – as opposed to paid professionals – deliver about 80% of all home care in Canada today. Many of them are “on call” 24/7. To be blunt, the entire health care system is riding on their shoulders. Thanks to their efforts, those loved ones don’t have to be institutionalized – or institutionalized as soon. This saves the system billions of dollars. In fact, the full value of what they provide – in terms of the market value of their time, the money they spend out of their own pockets, and the potential income they lose – comes to over $5 billion a year. And they deserve – and certainly need – a lot more support than they’re getting. According to a Statistics Canada research study, over 60% of family caregivers report being stressed, and half say their most important unmet need is for respite – a place to go to get a break, or a place they can take the loved one for a brief period, so that they themselves can enjoy a much-needed respite. And that’s precisely CARP’s third demand. Click here to go to www.DrugCoverage.ca, an excellent web site for all the drug benefit information you need in one place. It is a guide to reimbursement for medications through provincial / territorial and federal drug benefit plans. It links to the drug benefit formularies that list covered drugs.CARP demands that the federal government take action now – and earmark $2 billion for a national program of caregiver respite.

Learn More:

Demand 1) Guaranteed wait times for 18 essential medical treatments.
Click here to read the details.

Demand 2) Immediate coverage, under all provincial drug benefit plans, of all drugs approved by Health Canada.
Click here to read the details.

Demand 3) $2 billion to be earmarked by the Federal Government to provide respite facilities and information resources for family caregivers.
Click here to read the details.

Can we succeed? It all depends…on you.