Supporting a Family Caregiver, Part 1
Earlier this week, on April 4, Canada recognized National Caregiver Day (NCD), which is held the first Tuesday in April each year to formally recognize both caregivers and their contributions to Canadian society through their unpaid, and often invisible, labour as caregivers. This day is also specifically recognized as Family Caregiver Day in Ontario. Other provinces have their own celebrations such as Caregiver Awareness Month, which Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia all recognized in May and Quebec’s National Caregiver Week, which is the first week of November.
Photo by Manoj Kulkarni on Unsplash.
Understanding Who Caregivers Are and What They Do
According to Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario, “caregivers are individuals (family members, neighbours, friends and other significant people) who take on a caring role to support someone with a diminishing physical ability, a debilitating cognitive condition or a chronic life-limiting illness.”
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asserts that caregiving “is an essential public health service and should be prioritized as an emerging public health issue.” It even estimates that care provided by individuals to their family members and friends would cost nearly $470 billion a year if paid to professionals. In Canada, these estimates are between $21-$34 billion dollars annually (according to a 2012 Stats Canada study).
Supporting Caregivers in Community
Last year, I wrote a post for Home Hospice Association about how to support a caregiver, and while these posts are different, I will echo some of the same sentiments here.
While the lives of caregivers are often complex and challenging, the ways in which they need support are often fairly straightforward. Despite this, most caregivers do not receive the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and financial support they desperately need. If you know someone who is serving in a caregiving role for someone else in their life, here are four main areas in which you can provide meaningful help:
1) Give them a (real) break
Caregivers may feel physically and emotionally exhausted. However, even when they desperately need a break, they rarely get one. A significant way that you can help is by giving them some respite for a couple of hours, a full day, or a weekend. Allow them the opportunity to get out of the house (not just go in a different room!) and away from the caregiving environment. If you are not able to provide this kind of support yourself or the needs of the individual requiring care are too specific or medical in nature, you may offer to pay for a private nursing service or for a few hours of a personal support worker (PSW) as a way to offer that respite (read Part 2 to learn more about financial support).
Keep in mind others in the family who may be in need of respite as well. For example, children with special needs are often given significant emotional and medical attention. While parents are occupied with these needs, they may not have the capacity to be as attuned to the needs of other children in the house. The siblings of a child with special needs will also benefit greatly from one-on-one attention and time away from the home environment.
2) Help with the day-to-day
Caregivers are often responsible for the regular duties of managing a household with the additional responsibility of managing someone else’s day-to-day living…perhaps while being employed at the same time. The tasks of cooking, cleaning, assisting with medical care, transportation, booking and managing medical appointments, meeting with specialists, documenting routines and medical treatments, etc. can feel endless and overwhelming.
Caregivers expend a significant amount of emotional, physically, mental, and spiritual energy on a daily basis, which is why caregiver burnout is such a danger. Meaningful help for a caregiver could easily be assistance with the day-to-day tasks of life such as mowing the lawn, bringing in the garbage cans and recycling bins, changing the oil in the car, or going grocery shopping. Whether you drop off a frozen meal, pick the kids up from school, or shovel the snow, you can provide a great deal of relief to someone simply by removing one item from their lengthy (and often overwhelming) to-do list. When you don’t know what to say, offering to clean someone’s kitchen may go a long way. However, some individuals may be uncomfortable with you coming into their home to do their laundry or wash their dishes. In these cases, paying for a professional cleaning service every once in a while may be a way to help in a less intrusive way (again, read Part 2 to learn more about financial support).