Group items tagged

1. Bans insurance companies from dropping women when they get sick or become pregnant

2. Bans insurance companies from requiring women to obtain a pre-authorization or referral for access to ob-gyn care3. Improves the care of millions of older women with chronic conditions4. For women in new private plans, provides free coverage of mammograms and colonoscopies, one or more of which 20 million women have already received5. Beginning this summer, provides that free coverage will also include additional, comprehensive women's preventive services, including contraception in new plans6. Bans insurance companies from denying coverage for "pre-existing conditions," beginning in 2014. Currently, many women are denied coverage or charged more for such "pre-existing conditions" as breast or cervical cancer, pregnancy, having had a C-section, or having been a victim of domestic violence7. Ends the common practice of "gender rating," charging women substantially higher premiums than men for the same coverage, beginning in 20148. Provides greater access to affordable health coverage for women, with the establishment of new Health Insurance Exchanges for the millions who do not have health insurance through an employer, beginning in 2014. Currently, less than half of America's women can obtain affordable insurance through a job

After all is said and done, it appears that the relentless war on the Affordable Care Act by those who call it socialism has actually been, in large part, a war on women

Others drew back from that advice. Dr. Monica Morrow, chief breast cancer surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said it made more sense to view DCIS as a cancer precursor that should be treated the way it is now, with a lumpectomy or mastectomy. She questioned whether those women who were treated and ended up dying of breast cancer anyway had been misdiagnosed. In some cases, pathologists look at only a small amount of tumour, Morrow said, and could have missed areas of invasive cancer. Even the best mastectomy leaves cells behind, she added, which could explain why a small number of women with DCIS who had mastectomies, even double mastectomies, died of breast cancer.

Brawley said the new study, by showing which DCIS patients were at highest risk, would help enormously in defining who might benefit from treatment. It could not show that the high-risk women - young, black or with tumours with ominous molecular markers - were helped by treatment because there were too few of them, and pretty much every one of them was treated. But Brawley said he would like to see clinical trials that addressed that question, as well as whether the rest of the women with DCIS, 80 per cent of them, would be fine without treatment or with anti-estrogen drugs like tamoxifen or raloxifene that can reduce overall breast cancer risk. But if DCIS is actually a risk factor for invasive cancer, rather than a precursor, it might be possible to help women reduce their risk, perhaps with hormonal or immunological therapies to change the breast environment, making it less hospitable to cancer cells, Esserman said. "As we learn more, that gives us the courage to try something different," she said. The stakes in this debate are high. Karuna Jaggar, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, an education and activist organization, said women tended not to appreciate the harms of overtreatment and often overestimated their risk of dying of cancer, making them react with terror.

"Treatment comes with short- and long-term impacts," Jaggar said, noting that women who get cancer treatment are less likely to be employed several years later and tend to earn less than before. There are emotional tolls and strains on relationships. And there can be complications from breast cancer surgery, including lymphedema, a permanent pooling of lymphatic fluid in the arm. "These are not theoretical harms," Jaggar said.

"You feel isolated and shunned - it hurts your feelings and it just doesn't make sense in this day and age. It just seems like, why wouldn't you help women here?" It is a ritual that plays out routinely for women in the only province in Canada that does not provide surgical abortions within its borders, and one that pro-choice advocates say remains fraught with challenges despite pledges by the provincial government to remove barriers to abortion access.

Liberal Premier Wade MacLaughlan announced soon after his election in May that women from P.E.I. would be able to get surgical abortions in Moncton without the need for a doctor's referral, a measure that received guarded praise from pro-choice advocates. Under the arrangement, women who are less than 14 weeks pregnant can call a toll-free line for an appointment and have everything done in one day, when possible. Previously, women needed a

doctor's approval and had to have blood and diagnostic work done on the Island before travelling almost four hours to Halifax for the operation. Or they could go to a private clinic and pay upwards of $700 for the procedure. Abortion rights advocates say both are costly and stressful options for women, who rely on volunteers to do everything from finding people to accompany them to the hospital to arranging childcare. Becka Viau of the Abortion Rights Network helps women figure out requirements for bloodwork and pinpoint how far along they are in their pregnancy, as well as line up drivers, babysitters and meals while raising funds to cover things like the $45 bridge toll, phone cards and lost wages.

The pressure on the community to carry the safety of Island woman is ridiculous," she said. "You can only look at the facts for so long to see the kind of harm that's being done to women in this province by not having access." Still, for some MacLauchlan's announcement was a significant change for a province that has fought for decades to keep abortions out of its jurisdiction, with some seeing it as the beginning of the end of the restrictive policy. Some say opposition to abortion access is quietly waning on the Island, where it is not uncommon to see pro-choice rallies and political candidates.

Colleen MacQuarrie, a psychology professor at the University of Prince Edward Island who has studied the issue for years, said the Moncton plan had been discussed with former premier Robert Ghiz and was considered a first step toward making abortions available in the province. But a month after those discussions, Ghiz resigned. Reached at his home, he refused to comment on the talks but said everything was on the table. "We've created the evidence and we've gotten community support," said MacQuarrie, who published a report in 2014 that chronicled the experiences of women who got abortions off Island. "It has gotten better, but better is not enough. We need to have local access."

Rev. John Moses, a United Church minister in Charlottetown, published a sermon that condemned abortion opponents for not respecting a woman's right to control her health and called on politicians to "stop ducking the issue." "To tell people that they can't or to make it as difficult as we possibly can for them to gain access to that service strikes me as a kind of patriarchal control of women's bodies," he said in an interview. "It's a cheap form of righteousness."

Holly Pierlot, president of the P.E.I. Right to Life Association, says she's concerned about the easing of restrictions and plans to respond with education campaigns aimed specifically at youth. "Politically, we've certainly got a bit of a problem," she said. "We were disappointed by the new policies brought in by the provincial government and we are concerned by the federal move to increase access to abortion." Horizon Health in New Brunswick says the Moncton clinic saw 61 women from P.E.I. from July through to Nov. 30. P.E.I. Health Minister Doug Currie did not agree to an interview, but a department spokeswoman says that from April to October the province covered 44 abortions in Halifax and 33 in Moncton.

"The government made a commitment to address the barriers to access and they acted very quickly on it," Jean Doherty said. It's not clear whether that will be enough to satisfy the new federal Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who told the Charlottetown Guardian in September that "it's important that every Canadian across this country has access to a full range of health services, including full reproductive services, in every province." The party also passed a resolution in 2012 to financially penalize provinces that do not ensure access to abortion services. In an interview, Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott would only say the issue is on her radar.

This is something I am aware of, that I will be looking into and discussing with my team here and with my provincial and territorial counterparts," she said. Successive provincial governments have argued that the small province cannot provide every medical service on the Island or that there are no doctors willing to perform abortions, something pro-choice activist Josie Baker says is untrue. "We're tired of being given the run around when it comes to a really basic medical service that should have been solved 30 years ago," she said. "The most vulnerable people in our society are the ones that are suffering the most from it. There's no reason for it other than lack of political will."

Your proposed Bill 20 is meant to improve health-care access and cut costs in Quebec. But by banning access to IVF for women over 42, it is overstepping its objectives and violating the rights of citizens. Choosing to limit public funding for a service, when trying to save money, is one thing; but banning it completely, even when people choose to pay out of their own pockets, is an entirely different matter. When you were recently challenged on this point, you said that this is not a matter of cost but rather of "protecting mothers and children." My son and I are doing very well, thank you for your concern. And like other mothers who conceived in their 40s, I would appreciate some respect for my autonomy. This justification of 42 as an age limit for IVF is good old-fashioned paternalism that has no place in today's society. Under the guise of protection, this Bill represents an attack on Quebec women and mothers.

To make things worse, Bill 20 is threatening physicians with heavy fines if they direct me to another province or jurisdiction where I can privately access IVF after 42. This is an alarming violation of the professional autonomy of a doctor to refer patients, not to mention a violation of a woman's freedom to have access to health information she needs. In 2010, the Quebec government introduced a program that funded every aspect of IVF for everyone, an unprecedented level of coverage in North America. The program was in such high demand that it cost much more than expected, $261 million to date. Looking back, there is wide agreement in Quebec that the hasty introduction of the program in the absence of reflection and public consultation led to very problematic consequences. You, Minister Barrette, famously criticized this program for being an "open bar" and allowing access to IVF without appropriate restrictions.

But the fix for bad policy is not another bad policy. Proposing ethically and socially appropriate conditions of eligibility for publicly funded IVF is a laudable objective. The thoughtful and well-argued report published in June 2014 by the Quebec Commissioner for Health and Well-being, based on an extensive public consultation, proposes many such conditions that would allow cutting costs while respecting considerations of justice and equity. Conditions on access to public funding may be justified.

But there is no way to justify draconian measures that have nothing to do with cost control, but are rather an affront to women's rights. Rather than protecting us from IVF, you should protect us from unwarranted government intrusion. Vardit Ravitsky is an associate professor in the Bioethics Program at the School of Public Health, University of Montreal.

This leaves the women using Fredericton's freestanding Clinic 554, formerly the Morgentaler Clinic (which was forced to shut down after it ran out of money last summer) out in the cold. This situation frustrates Adrian Edgar, Clinic 554's new medical director, to no end. For Dr. Edgar, the main issues are privacy and accessibility. He believes many women in New Brunswick would prefer to have the procedure in a setting more private than a hospital, due to the lingering stigma and social ostracism that surround abortions. There can be repercussion for families, relationships, even jobs. Many women travel to Maine in order to protect their privacy. "I don't know why the government isn't listening to women on this," he says over the phone from Fredericton. "People want to have the procedure in an anonymous way, they don't want to go the hospital. It's a small province. You go to the hospital and everyone knows, and everyone talks ... and it's on your medical record."

The situation in New Brunswick just highlights how unequal abortion provisions are across the country. There are 46 clinics or hospitals providing the service in Quebec, but just one in Nova Scotia (in Halifax) and none in Prince Edward Island. That is not universal access. Clinic 554 offers a full range of family health care, and also provides services to the gay and transgender communities. In keeping with Dr. Morgentaler's policy, it will not turn away women who can't afford to pay for an abortion, and Dr. Edgar knows that some patients, especially women who are in vulnerable positions to begin with, are already stretched to the limit. "I feel like it's absolutely unacceptable for people to feel that pressure," he says. "It's Canada, and this should be a publicly funded service because it's a medically necessary one. It doesn't make sense to me that we should be targeting women to pay for health care."

Dr. Edgar has been trying to meet with provincial ministers to discuss the funding situation, to no avail. If invited to a meeting, he would point out not only the unfairness of some women having to pay for a service that should be publicly insured, but also that it's actually more costeffective to provide that service outside of hospitals. And, as he points out, the province is in the midst of a cost-cutting exercise to move some services away from hospitals. Why not this one? "I'm trying hard to do the province's job for them," he says, "but I would like not to, very much."

women still only make 70% of what men make

compared to other countries, Canada is underperforming

Women make up 41% of the NDP caucus

Canada needs proactive pay equity legislation that would force all employers to ensure that all employees are getting equal pay for work of equal value.

Consumer health advocates say they aren’t surprised that women’s claims for long-term-care insurance are higher than men’s.Because women typically live longer than men, they frequently act as caregivers when their husbands need long-term care, advocates say, thus reducing the need for nursing help that insurance might otherwise pay for. Once a woman needs care, however, there may be no one left to provide it.

“The Affordable Care Act recognized the gender bias in health insurance,” she said. “The same [rules] should apply to long-term-care insurance.”

A 2012 study by the National Women’s Law Center found that 92 percent of top-selling health plans in the individual market practiced sex-based pricing in states where the practice was allowed. (Fourteen states banned or limited the practice, according to the report.) Nearly a third of plans charged women at least 30 percent more than men for the same coverage, even plans that did not include maternity benefits, the study found.

Insurers that sell individual and small-group health policies on the state-based health insurance exchanges or outside them on the private market in 2014 will be able to vary premiums based only on geography, family size, age and tobacco use. (Plans that have grandfathered status under the law are exempt from these requirements.)

Under federal laws against sex discrimination in the workplace, employers are generally prohibited from charging women more than men for the same health insurance coverage.

However, we should avoid diagnosing this problem merely as a failure of law enforcement. Murders represent the tip of an iceberg of problems related to endemic violence in communities. Many Aboriginal women and girls, and indeed men and boys, live each day under the threat of interpersonal violence and its myriad consequences.

Initial statements from the three federal ministers tasked with leading the forthcoming inquiry — the ministers of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Justice and Status of Women — suggest that its purpose is to achieve justice, to renew trust between indigenous communities and the Canadian government and law enforcement bodies, and to start a process of healing.

The inquiry surely must also endeavour to lay the groundwork for a clear plan to address the broader problem of interpersonal violence, which, in turn, is rooted in several key determinants. Addressing interpersonal violence is not merely an issue of justice; it is also a public health concern.

Factors associated with both the experience and perpetration of interpersonal violence are manifold. They include but are not limited to mental health issues, drug and alcohol misuse, unemployment, social isolation, low income and a history of experiencing disrupted parenting and physical discipline as a child. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report has highlighted that many of these factors are widespread in the Aboriginal populations of Canada.4 Many of the same factors contribute to disparities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in areas such as education, socioeconomic circumstances and justice. T

here is also substantial overlap with identified determinants of poor health in Aboriginal communities both in Canada and elsewhere.5,6 These are the factors associated with higher rates of youth suicide, adverse birth outcomes and tuberculosis, and poorer child health. It’s clear that a common web — woven of a legacy of colonization and cultural genocide, and a cumulative history of societal neglect, discrimination and injustice — underlies both endemic interpersonal violence and health disparities in Canada’s indigenous populations. There is no conversation to be had about one without a conversation about the other — if the aim is healing — because the root causes are the same.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently engaged in developing a global plan of action to strengthen the role of health systems in addressing interpersonal violence, particularly that involving women and girls.7 A draft report by the WHO acknowledges interpersonal violence as a strongly health-related issue that nevertheless requires a multisectoral response tailored to the specific context. Evidence from Aboriginal community models in Canada gives hope for healing.

A recent report from the Canadian Council on Social Determinants of Health highlighted important strides that some Aboriginal communities have made to address the root causes of, and to mitigate, inequities through efforts to restore the people’s connection with indigenous culture.8 Increasing community control over social, political and physical environments has been linked to improvements in health and health determinants.

The public health sector in many parts of Canada has embraced the need for strong community involvement in restoring Aboriginal people to the health that is their right. In many community-led projects over the past few decades, the health care sector has worked with others to address common proximal and distal determinants of disparities.

We are presented with not just an opportunity for renewing trust between indigenous communities and the Government of Canada but also for extending the roles of public health and the health care sector in the facilitation of trust and healing. There is much that the health sector can contribute to the forthcoming inquiry. Health Canada should be involved from the start to ensure that public health is properly represented

But let's not be too hard on those economists. The rest of us don't pay that much attention to workers such as Shireen Luchuk either - not, at least, until our families need her. And not until someone such as Elizabeth Tracey Mae Wettlaufer is charged with murdering eight residents in Ontario nursing homes. Then we have lots of questions: Who is overseeing the care of our seniors? Are our mothers and fathers safe? Will we be safe, when we end up there?

The question we might try asking is this: If the care that Luchuk offers is so valuable, why don't we treat it that way? Dr. Janice Keefe, a professor of family and gerontology at Mount Saint Vincent University and director of the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging, says "the emotion attached to these jobs removes the value."

Caregiving, Keefe says, is seen "as an extension of women's unpaid labour in the home." Those jobs are still overwhelmingly filled by women. And, while times are changing, the work they do is still mostly for women - whether it's the widows needing care who are more likely to outlive their husbands, the working moms who need child care or the adult daughters who are still most likely to carry the burden of aging parents.

Yet it's as if society wants to believe that professional caregivers should do their work out of love and obligation - as if care would be tainted by higher pay and better benefits. That's an argument you never hear for lawyers and accountants. It's certainly not one that Adam Smith, the founding father of political economy, made for the butcher or the baker.

In last year's book, Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?, Swedish writer Katrine Marcal argued that the market, as Smith and his fellow economists conceived it, fails to accept an essential reality: "People are born small, and die fragile." Smith described an economy based on self-interest - the baker makes his bread as tasty as he can, not because he loves bread, but because he has an interest in people buying it. That way he can go to the butcher, and buy meat himself. But Smith missed something important. It wasn't the butcher who actually put the dinner on his table each night, as Marcal points out. It was his devoted mother, who ran Smith's household for him until the day she died.

Today, she'd likely be busy with her own job. But care - the invisible labour that made life possible for the butcher and the baker (and the lawyer and the accountant) - still has to be provided by someone. Society would like that someone to be increasingly qualified, regulated and dedicated, all for what's often exhausting, even dangerous, shift work, a few dollars above minimum wage. One side effect of low-paying, low-status work is that it tends to come with less oversight, and lower skills and standards. That's hardly a safe bar for seniors in residential long-term care, let alone those hoping to spend their last days being tended to in the privacy of their homes. We get the care we pay for.

It's not much better on the other end of the life cycle, where staff at daycares also receive low wages for long days, leading to high turnover. "I am worth more than $12 an hour," says Regan Breadmore, a trained early-childhood educator with 20 years experience. But when her daycare closed, and she went looking for work, that's the pay she was offered. She has now, at 43, returned to school to start a new career. "I loved looking after the kids. It's a really important job - you are leaving your infants with us, we are getting your children ready to go to school," she says. But if her daughter wanted to follow in her footsteps, "I would tell her no, just because of the lack of respect."

It's not hard to see where this is going. Young, educated women are not going to aspire to jobs with poor compensation, and even less prestige. Young men aren't yet racing to fill them. Families are smaller. Everyone is working. Unlike Adam Smith, we can't all count on mom (or a daughter, or son) to be around to take care of us. Who is going to fill the gaps to provide loving labour to all those baby boomers about to age out of the economy? Right now, the solution is immigrant women, who, especially outside of the public system, can be paid a few dollars above minimum wage. That's not giving care fair value. It's transferring it to an underclass of working-poor women. And it doesn't ensure a skilled caregiving workforce - all the while, as nurses and care assistants will point out, the care itself is becoming more complex, with dementia, mental illness and other ailments.

Ideally, in the future, we'll all live blissfully into old age. But you might need your diaper changed by a stranger some day.

Maybe robots can do the job by then. Rest assured, you'll still want someone such as Luchuk to greet you by name in the morning, to pay attention to whether you finish your mashed-up carrots. When she's holding your hand, she will seem like the economy's most valuable worker. Let's hope enough people like her still want the job.

Freedom for our bodies, our land and our territories.”

Approximately, 100,000 people in New Brunswick, almost one in seven, live below the poverty line. Almost one third of single-parent households in New Brunswick are poor, according to 2011 statistics. Following the most recent economic crisis, governments have been implementing austerity budgets and New Brunswick is no exception. New Brunswickers are still struggling for pay equity, access to reproductive health care and child care.

Elsipogtog women made international headlines when they put their bodies on the line to defend their territories against shale gas. Maya women in Guatemala are demanding justice in Canadian courts for rape and murder committed by a Canadian mine’s security guards. Rape is a weapon used in wars around the world.

More of us are demanding action be taken for our missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and making the links to capitalism, colonization and destruction of the land.

This global feminist movement brings together diverse groups, including women’s groups, unions, anti-poverty groups, Indigenous activists, international solidarity groups and many others. Since the first March in 2000, activists have organized local, national and global marches, hundreds of workshops and actions and lobbying of governments and international organizations.

Speakers:

The 4th International World March of Women was launched on March 8, International Women’s Day, and will conclude October 17, 2015, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

This national conversation will be broadcast live from the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto on Sept. 21. In partnership with the Toronto Star and Le Devoir, it will also be livestreamed in both official languages beginning at 7 p.m. Twitter Canada will broadcast the event live on Periscope and promote the debate on social media. "This debate - and these questions - matter not only to women but to all Canadians. The Star is pleased to be working with our partners to advance and promote the discussion," said Jane Davenport, managing editor at the Toronto Star.

"Women make up half of the population but they remain under-represented in Parliament and in decision-making roles in business," said the Star's social justice reporter Laurie Monsebraaten, who will be participating in the panel. "Despite the fact that more women than men are now graduating from university and college and more of them are moving into senior management positions at work, they still earn 33 per cent less than men. As a result, they are more likely to be poor in old age." The Alliance for Women's Rights is made up of 100 partner organizations committed to starting a conversation about women's rights during the election.

"It's an opportunity for us to, for the first time, hear our leaders speak on these issues within the context of the election," said Sarah Kennell, from Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights. "Women's issues, gender equality and women's rights have been completely absent from the conversation thus far."

£7 an hour, receives an extra £1 an hour for a night shift and £2 an hour for weekends.

"The NHS encourages you to have these NVQs, all this training, improve your knowledge, and then they [private care companies] come along and it all comes to nothing.

Care UK expects to make a profit "of under 6%" by the end of the three-year contract

£700,000 operating profit in the six months between September last year and March this year,

In 1993 the private sector provided 5% of the state-funded services given to people in their homes, known as domiciliary care. By 2012 this had risen to 89% – largely driven by the local authorities' need for cheaper ways to deliver services and the private sector's assurance that they could provide the answer. More than £2.7bn is spent by the state on this type of care every year. Private providers have targeted wages as a way to slice out profits, de-skilling the sector in the process.

1.4 million care workers in England are unregulated by any professional body and less than 50% have completed a basic NVQ2 level qualification, with 30% apparently not even completing basic induction trainin

Today 8% of care homes are supplied by private equity-owned firms – and the number is growing. The same is true of 10% of services run for those with learning disabilities

William Laing

report on private equity in July 2012

"It makes pots of money.

Those profits – which are made before debt payments and overheads – don't appear on the bottom line of the health firms' company accounts, and because of that corporation tax isn't paid on them.

Some of that was in payments on loans issued in Guernsey, meaning tax could not be charged. Its sister company, Silver Sea, responsible for funding the construction of Care UK care homes, is domiciled in the tax haven of Luxembourg

Bridgepoint

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In 2012, age-related needs were identified as the single most common problem requiring help from caregivers (28%) (Chart 1). This was followed by cancer (11%), cardio-vascular disease (9%), mental illness (7%), and Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (6%).

The majority of caregivers reported providing transportation to their primary care receiver, making it the most frequent type of care provided in the last 12 months (73%)

Most often, caregivers spent under 10 hours a week on caregiving duties. In particular, one-quarter of caregivers (26%) reported spending one hour or less per week caring for a family member or friend. Another 32% reported spending an average of 2 to 4 hours per week and 16% spent 5 to 9 hours per week on caregiving activities.  

The most common types of care were not always the ones most likely to be performed on a regular basis (i.e., at least once a week). For instance, despite the fact that personal care and providing medical assistance were the least common forms of care, when they were performed, these tasks were most likely to be done more regularly.

Emotional support often accompanied other help to the care receiver. Nearly nine in ten caregivers (88%) reported spending time with the person, talking with and listening to them, cheering them up or providing some other form of emotional support. Virtually all caregivers (96%) ensured that the ill or disabled family member or friend was okay, either by visiting or calling.

Overall, caregivers spent a median of 3 hours a week caring for an ill or disabled family member or friend. This climbed to a median of 10 hours per week for caregivers assisting a child and 14 hours for those providing care to an ill spouse (Chart 3).

In addition, about half of caregivers (51%) reported that they performed tasks inside the care recipients’ home in the last 12 months, such as preparing meals, cleaning, and laundry. Another 45% reported providing assistance with house maintenance or outdoor work.

For some, caregiving was a large part of their life - equivalent to a full time job. Approximately one in ten caregivers were spending 30 or more hours a week providing some form of assistance to their ill family member or friend.  These caregivers were most likely caring for an ill spouse (31%) or child (29%).5

The actual time spent performing tasks is often combined with time needed to travel to provide care. Approximately three-quarters (73%) of caregivers indicated that they did not live in the same household or building as their care receiver, meaning they often had to travel to reach the care recipients’ home. Just over half (52%), however, reported having to travel less than 30 minutes by car.  Roughly 12% of caregivers provided help to a family member who lived at least one hour away by car.

Certain health conditions required more hours of care. This was the case for developmental disabilities or disorders, where 51% of these caregivers were spending at least 10 hours a week providing help

Caregivers have multiple responsibilities beyond caring for their chronically ill, disabled or aging family member or friend. In 2012, 28% of caregivers could be considered “sandwiched” between caregiving and childrearing, having at least one child under 18 years living at home

Four provinces had rates above the national average of 28%, including Ontario (29%), Nova Scotia (31%), Manitoba (33%) and Saskatchewan (34%) (Textbox Chart 1). The higher levels of caregiving in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Manitoba were largely related to caring for a loved one suffering from a chronic health condition or disability, whereas in Saskatchewan, the higher level of caregiving was attributed to aging needs. 

Historically, caregivers have been disproportionally women (Cranswick and Dosman 2008). This was also true in 2012, when an estimated 54% of caregivers were women.

Although the median number of caregiving hours was similar between men and women (3 and 4 hours per week, respectively), women were more likely than their male counterparts to spend 20 or more hours per week on caregiving tasks (17% versus 11%). Meanwhile, men were more likely than women to spend less than one hour per week providing care (29% versus 23%) (Chart 5).

For instance, they were twice as likely as their male counterparts to provide personal care to the primary care receiver, including bathing and dressing (29% versus 13%).

Caring for an ill or disabled family member or friend can span months or years. For the vast majority of caregivers (89%), their caregiving activities had been going on at least one year or longer, with half reporting they had been caring for a loved one for four years or more.

The aging of the population, higher life expectancies and the shift in emphasis from institutionalized care to home care may suggest that more chronically ill, disabled and frail people are relying on help from family and friends than in the past. Using the GSS, it is possible to examine the changes in the number of caregivers aged 45 years and older, recognizing that methodological differences between survey cycles warrant caution when interpreting any results.

Bearing in mind these caveats, results from the GSS show that between 2007 and 2012, the number of caregivers aged 45 and over increased by 760,000 to 4.5 million caregivers, representing a 20% increase in the number of caregivers over the five years.

Having less time with children was an often cited outcome of providing care to a chronically ill, disabled, or aging family member or friend. About half (49%) of caregivers with children under 18 indicated that their caregiving responsibilities caused them to reduce the amount of time spent with their children.6

Overall, the vast majority of caregivers (95%) indicated that they were effectively coping with their caregiving responsibilities, with only 5% reporting that they were not coping well.7 However, the feeling of being unable to cope grew with a greater number of hours of care. By the time caregivers were spending 20 or more hours per week on caregiving tasks, one in ten (10%) were not coping well.  

In addition, while most were able to effectively manage their caregiving responsibilities, 28% found providing care somewhat or very stressful and 19% of caregivers indicated that their physical and emotional health suffered in the last 12 months as a result of their caregiving responsibilities.

The health consequences of caregiving were even more pronounced when caregivers were asked specific questions on their health symptoms. Over half (55%) of caregivers felt worried or anxious as a result of their caregiving responsibilities, while about half (51%) felt tired during the past 12 months (Chart 8). Other common symptoms associated with providing care included feeling short-tempered or irritable (36%), feeling overwhelmed (35%) and having a disturbed sleep (34%).8

The financial impacts related to caring for a loved one can be significant. Lost days at work may reduce household income, while out-of-pocket expenses, such as purchasing specialized aids or devices, transportation costs, and hiring professional help to assist with care, can be borne from caring for a loved one. In many cases, financial support, from either informal or formal sources, can ease the financial burden associated with caregiving responsibilities. Overall, about one in five caregivers (19%) were receiving some form of financial support.