Starfish, the Making of a Movie about Family Caregiving and Community Support
June 26, 2012
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Bill Clark, a British movie maker, talks about Starfish, his movie of family caregiving and community support. He describes his background, career, current work in movie-making, and experience of family caregiving. He explains what Starfish is about, the stage its production has reached, and the future he sees for it. He discusses its background, where the name comes from, what led him to make it, and the support he receives in making it. He explains what’s meant by ‘back story’, what this is for Starfish, and what made it so appealing to him. He talks about the back stories of the people whose stories are told in Starfish. He tells us about the making of Starfish and the challenges he encountered, and his ambitions for it. He talks about using movies to tell the stories of family caregiving and its community of family caregivers, and what makes stories successful for movies. He shares his message for family caregivers with powerful stories like those in Starfish. www.origamifilms.com
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
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.
