The Role of the Roman Catholic Faith in Family Caregiving
May 13, 2013
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Angelo Minardi is a full-time Chaplain at All Saints Catholic Secondary School. He describes his personal story, his work as school Chaplain, and his experience of family caregiving. He discusses the ways in which the Roman Catholic faith supports family caregivers, including young people who have the role of family caregiver, who are members of a congregation of a Roman Catholic Church, who are members of its local community or, through an Archdiocese, who live in a major city. He explains how the Roman Catholic faith views parents’ responsibilities to their children and children’s responsibilities to their parents. He gives examples of care supported by the Roman Catholic faith, and says whether pressures on healthcare systems are increasing the need for faith-based care facilities. He says what more he wants to do and see done to increase help for all family caregivers in their caring and in taking care of themselves. He shares his message to families and family caregivers.
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.
