Plan to visit our web site to learn more about The Caring Game. You will have an opportunity to hear the characters’ voices on tape through an interactive section about the game. Click on www.carewatchtoronto.org.

We have been busy over the past months marketing The Caring Game. As an experimental workshop it is suitable for playing with groups involved in providing in-home care, either in a supervisory role or actual “hands on” care. It is also valuable as an orientation tool for volunteers, caregivers and many other people involved with in-home care.

The Caring Game comes equipped with two game boards as well as a self-explanatory manual for facilitating the session. The characters are six in-home care recipients with their various life occurrences which is part of this game experience.

Thanks to the Ontario Trillium Foundation for funding which helped us realize our dream of producing The Caring Game and making it available across Ontario.

 

Camille Waywell

Chair, The Caring Game

(Continued from page )

8.        work and extra training.

9.        A system of user centred respite care options that would address the wide variety of care needs in both settings for care and the amount of time available. Information about these options must be widely disseminated.

10.        Family caregivers should be compensated for their work to encourage and preserve their economic security and the security of their families. This could include, but not be limited to, the creation of:

·           drop out provisions in the Canada Pension Plan analogous to the drop-out provision for women caring for children under seven.

·           leave provisions analogous to Employment Insurance parental leave, including cash allowances and job security for short term leave to care for a dying relative.

·           an improved system of tax incentives for caregivers.

·           appropriate self-directed funding programs, allowing caregivers the option of managing and purchasing a personally chosen, system monitored “basket” of services for their family members.

11.     Funding for community care must include wages and working conditions that adequately recognise the contribution of professional and non-professional staff and that compare favourably with wages and working conditions in both hospitals and long term care facilities.

 

Conclusion

This study and our ongoing work with care consumers have shown clearly that informal caregiving is a grossly undervalued activity.  At present our health care system fails to acknowledge, either in pay, policy or program, that the full-time family caregiver is a valuable national resource.  This failure must be redeemed.  In the light of the huge proportion of home care provided by family caregivers, adequate support for them constitutes one of the most significant factors in ensuring the sustainability of our whole health care system.  Only determined national leadership can end the current

(Continued on page )

intolerable buck-passing between the

 

Provincial and Federal governments and the consequent dangers that threaten our public health care system.  We need to fully recognise and support family caregivers and we need to do it now.

 

Care Watch Toronto

March 2002