The emotional cost of caregiving webinar

It can be rewarding to provide care for a loved one. It can also be overwhelming, confusing and stressful, especially while working full time. Caregivers often feel obligated to take care of others before themselves which can lead to burnout, isolation and depression.

Mary Ann Baynton, Director of Collaboration and Strategy with Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, and Organizational Health Consultants on Canada Life’s Well-being team will share tips and insights on: 

Caregiver resources: advocate for the health and wellness of loved ones by accessing government services, health care, home care or financial support.

Leader support for caregivers: support employees to remain productive and healthy at work while they are also caring for loved ones at home. 

Loss and grief: responses to grief, including anticipatory grief and the emotional cost of being a caregiver.

[workplacestrategiesforment]

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Canada Life public webinar. Before we begin with today's topic, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm sitting in our Toronto office, which is situated on the territory of the Mississauga's of the Credit, the Anishinaabe the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron Wendat detonations. We acknowledge the dish With One Spoon Covenant, a treaty whose spirit is one-based in collective stewardship and sharing of land and resources, and one which extends to all nations living in present day Toronto
Canada Life acknowledges the harms of the past and we respect the history people and land in the areas we live and operate. And we're committed to building relationships and moving forward in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, guided by shared principles of respect, equality, and collaboration. If you'd like to listen to French audio for today's session, you can access French interpretation by clicking on the link that was contained in the original invite. And if you no longer have that invite, go to the event page at workplacestrateg iesformentalhealth.com to find the link.
And if you're doing that, please be sure to mute your computer audio as well. Our topic today is the emotional cost of caregiving-- strategies for caregivers and the leaders who support them. As always, we're joined by Mary Anne Baynton, director of collaboration and strategy with Workplace Strategies for Mental Health as well as members of the Canada Life Well-being team from all across Canada. I'm Laura, and today I'm joined by Laurel, Michelle, Ilana, Carolyn and Samia.
As you listen, you're welcome to note your questions or comments in Slido. Visit slido.com and use the hashtag showing at the bottom of the screen, hashtag caregivers. Also, if you have ideas of topics that you'd like us to cover in future webinars, please feel free to share those in Slido as well. And we expect to have time left at the end of today's session to respond to your questions and comments. We'll be mentioning a number of resources that are available to you throughout today's session, and we've compiled those resources into one pagers in English and French.
And we'll post those on the event page in Workplace Strategies after today's session. Laurel and Mary Anne, I'm passing it over to you now to get us started with our first topic, caregiver resources. Wonderful. Thanks, Laura. I'm going to get us started with a quote from Rosalyn Carter, former First Lady of the United States. She once said that there are four kinds of people in this world. Those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.
Caregiving is universal. So what is caregiving? It can be someone caring for a life partner, parent, child, or a dependent with special needs. It can be caring for an extended family member, or even a friend, or neighbor. Caregiving may be helping someone cope with activities of daily living. They may find themselves supporting the person's medical treatment, helping them make appointments, get to appointments, or advocating on their behalf with providers, agencies, or the health care system.
It can be rewarding to provide care for a loved one, but it can also be overwhelming, confusing, and stressful, especially while working full-time. Caregivers often feel obligated to take care of others before taking care of themselves, which can lead to burnout, isolation, and depression. This is why we feel it's such an important topic to discuss, so that we can learn how to support caregivers through the stress and emotions associated with caregiving.
And if you yourself are a caregiver, we hope that there will be some helpful information shared here today to help you. Mary Ann, what assistance does the Workplace Strategies for Mental Health site offer to caregivers to help them reduce the stress associated with their role?
So Laura, there's a lot. But I want to say first just listening to you saying about caregivers don't take care of themselves first. If one more person said to me when I was a caregiver, oh, you need to take more time and care for yourself I think I might have lost my mind. Because the thing is, you're trying to do your job. You're trying to be good at being a caregiver, and you're exhausted. And the idea that you're going to go to the spa for a day is just so far from your reality that those kinds of well-intended statements just seem like somebody saying, well let's paint the sky green.
So I absolutely loved all of the people that I've ever cared for in my life. But that doesn't mean that I didn't want to run and hide sometimes. It didn't mean that sometimes I felt like I had had enough. And so I want to be realistic when we're talking about this that caregiving sounds like motherhood and apple pie, but sometimes it's more like uncontrolled chaos. And a lot of the things, Laurel, that we have on the workplace strategy site-- so we have things we actually have something called caregiver resources.
Which came from people giving me tips and strategies that really reduced my stress, improve my ability to care for people. We have health resources, which is when you want to learn more about the person's condition, or about how you can help them. We have information there about government services. I mean, something as simple as the benefit finder. Who knew that there was one website that the government puts up where you can say what province you live in, what the condition is of the person you're caring, for what sorts of things you need. And it'll pop up with what's available.
We also have information for leaders who have caregivers in their team, who they really don't know how to help. And of course, whenever you read about it, it says flexibility, but sometimes that's not possible. So there's many other things there. And then, Jessica Grass who is a psychotherapist, she wrote for us the supportive conversation library. And among other things, talking to somebody who's in pain, or somebody who's got a mental health issue. There's talking to somebody who has chronic disease or has a terminal diagnosis.
So do we have anything on Workplace Strategies? Yes, we have a lot. There's also a whole section on loss and grief and the very different approaches, the different reactions that we might have to it. So yeah, Laura. Lots.
There's lots. Wonderful. And this is something, this next question is actually something that I deal with being far away, geographically far away from some of the members in my family. And that is that in many cases as a caregiver, you're also looking after logistic things, which may mean matters of housing, home care, or community support. A lot of which has to kind of be sourced locally, so how can you help individuals trying to do some of that from afar?
So again, that kind of information is under caregiver resources. But let me tell you something things that I found out, is that the Red Cross often has home care services, as well as equipment that they will rent. That there are the Canadian Cancer Society may have wheelchairs or other pieces of equipment that you can use. In many provinces there's local health authorities. They have different names in different provinces, but they often can link you to resources. And almost all of what I've just talked about is free, or it's very low cost.