Recognizing the Caregiver Crisis: Family Caregiver of the Year Award
July 27, 2010
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Leann Reynolds is President of Homewatch CareGivers, sponsors of the Family Caregiver of the Year Award, and hosts of www.familycaregiverblog.com. Larry Ellis is President of SoftWright LLC, of Aurora, Colorado and a former winner of the Family Caregiver of the Year award. They both are united in their experienced-based view that family caregivers aren’t acknowledged, respected and supported to anything like the degree they deserve. In this Episode, ‘Recognizing the Caregiver Crisis: the Family Caregiver of the Year Award’ they explain the purposes of the award, how to nominate someone, and how it reflects their own experiences with family caregiving and as a family caregiver. They share their own stories. They discuss the challenges faced by family caregivers, and their needs. They tell us what they would like to see done to help family caregivers gain more recognition for their services not only to their own family, but to the entire healthcare system.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
