Chapter 1
Elder Care Canada - What is
ElderCare?
Definition:
Elder
(el'dãr) n. 1) an older person 2) an aged person 3) a forefather;
ancestor 4) an older person with some authority in a tribe or community.
Care (kâr) n.
1) mental pain; worry; anxiety 2) close attention; watchfulness; heed 3)
a liking or regard (for); inclination (to do) something 4) charge; protection;
custody 5) something to worry about, watch over, or attend to.
The Issue:
The senior population is growing in Canada and as a result, the issues facing our aging
population will continue to become even more important in the coming years. From
approximately 3.5 million in 1996, our senior population will grow to an approximate 6.9
million by 2021. (Click
Here for full statistics.) That's a lot of people and as you'll soon find out in
this Guide, the resources available to our senior's today are barely adequet. How do
you think this bodes for the future if you don't start planning today?
Do you ever wonder what will happen when you get older? What services can you
expect ... and where will you find the information on those services. Just when
working families thought they had enough on their plates, many of them are now faced with
having to make decisions regarding the health and well-being of their aging parents. Do
they need care? Should they be in a nursing home? What does it cost? Is it clean? Is it
safe? What if they don't want to go? And what other options are available? The Elder
Care Canada Resource Guide meets these complex issues head-on, offering
friendly, unbiased advice on this sensitive topic. It shows how we can wade through the
anxiety and conflict to make informed decisions about their parents' needs; the elements
of caregiving; living wills and other legal elements; how to balance their own lives in
terms of work, family and caregiving; and how to get emotional support their families so
desperately need.
One thing we know for certain: Change is inevitable and whether welcome or unwelcome
the secret is how we adapt and react to that change.
Elder care is a term that covers any service provided to an elder, ranging through the
continuum of care from an adult making a telephone reassurance call to the kind of skilled
nursing provided by hospitals. Elder care therefore includes both the care services
provided by the senior's family or a friend and those tasks which the senior, the family
or a friend arranges for others to perform. (Taken from: National Eldercare Service
Glossary of Eldercare Terms)
We all have older loved ones but who really needs this care? It's not something
that is clearly defined but there are indicators that you should look for. These
warning signs include but are not limited to:
- deteriorating physical or mental health
- poor hygiene
- missed meals
- malnutrition
- incontinence
- unsafe or unsanitary living conditions
- mental confusion
- memory problems
- signs of depression
- wandering
- poor judgment
- poor decision-making
- unpaid bills
- limited mobility
- inability to drive
- lack of access to transportation
- lack of a social network
Who is giving this care? The following statistics were taken from
Statistic Canada's General Social Survey in 1996:
- 69% of caregivers are women — mostly married, working mothers
- 70% of care recipients are women
- 58% of care recipients are 65 years and older
- Nearly half a million Canadians moved to care for someone with a
long-term illness or to be cared for by a relative or friend
- Half of the caregiving relationships that involve a move concern an adult
child taking care of an ailing parent
- In nearly one in five cases, people moved closer to care for a friend
Although some studies below show
that for the most part seniors feel that they are in good mental and physical health, the
numbers also show that as our elders age, these problems do continue to escalate and can
therefore become a real burden on those caregivers who elect to to get involved. And
where do these caregivers go to get the information they need to care for their loved
ones? Right here! That's what this resource guide is for. We will show
you the issues that you will confront and offer you a guide to the resources that you will
need.
Ok, so what are the issues facing Elders today in Canada? Below are
a number of studies conducted throughout Canada and they really show that there are many
issues that caregivers as well as Seniors themselves have to be cognizant of.
"Seniors
in Canada 2006 Report Card"- More recentry there was a report entitled "Seniors
in Canada 2006 Report Card" released by the National Advisory Council on
Aging (Click Here to read the entire report
... it is a PDF document and is 70 pages long). This Report Card analyzes national data
for Canadian seniors (those aged 65 and over). This demographic now encompasses more than
4.2 million persons and represents a tremendous diversity of situations based on age, sex,
life history, income, regional and cultural dimensions, etc. Most of the data presented
are based on people living in households; this represents 93% of all seniors, but only 66%
of those aged 85 and over.
Life expectancy at age 65 has continued to increase over the past five years. On average,
a 65-year-old man can expect to live an additional 17.4 years, and a 65-year-old woman, an
additional 20.8 years. These figures place Canada among the OECD countries with the
highest life expectancy at age 65. Between 1999 and 2003, life expectancy at age 65
increased by 1 year for men and 0.6 years for women.
There have been substantial improvements in the area of
seniors’ functional health,
particularly among men. This indicator summarizes eight dimensions of functioning (sight,
hearing, speech, mobility, dexterity, emotion, cognitive abilities and pain). In 2003, 74%
of men reported being in very good or perfect functional health, compared to 66% in
1998-99. Among women the increase was only one percentage point, rising from 63% to 64%.
Rural Seniors' Dialogue- held in Burnaby, British
Columbia (BC), on November 5, 2004 (Click Here for the
full 11 page report). This Seniors' Dialogue was part of the Rural Dialogue, an
ongoing, two-way discussion between the Government of Canada and Canadians from rural,
remote and northern regions. The objective of this particular dialogue was to better
identify the issues facing seniors living in rural areas and small communities. The
following issues/topics were identified:
- Health care - hospitals
- Transportation
- Seniors' housing
- Assisted living
- Home living support/care - basic necessities
- Need for advocacy
- Building seniors' capacities
- Sharing information across the group
- Clearer program criteria and principles for using Government of Canada health care
funding
- Financial security
"Here and Now: Seniors' Issues for the 21st Century" - In
January 2006 the Ontario Society (Coalition) of Senior Citizens' Organizations released
results of a survey entitled "Here and Now: Seniors' Issues for the 21st
Century" (Click Here
for the full 31 page report). This organization represents over 500,000 seniors
across Ontario and as such provides a good cross section of seniors in the province.
- Over 94% of respondents ranked health care as "important" or "very
important" followed closely by home care (88%) and Medicare (85%).
As Canada's Elders arrive at their "golden" years the following issues were
taken from the above studies and will form the basis for the rest of this guide.
Theses are some of life altering changes that must be embraced and viewed with a positive
outlook:
RETIREMENT - When the circle of life begins we don't think of
retirement; we have our full lives ahead of us. As we reach middle age we view
retirement as financial planning. When we reach the age of retirement, we now
wonder:
- Will I have enough income to support my life? Did you know that there were 137,000 seniors in Canada who were elegible for
something called the GIS (guaranteed Income Supplement) in 2003 but did not receive it? Were you or your aging parents included in
this amazing statisitc? We will discuss this fully in Chapter 4 ... Click Here if you want to
find all about the GIS right now!
- How will I fill my days without my job? Chapter 6
(Seniors in Society) and chapter 10 (Seniors Associations
Across Canada) will provide lots of links for you to reach out and address this issue.
BEARVEMENT - The loss of a loved one is always a difficult event in
life and the loss of a life-long union is one of the most difficult. The secret to a
healthy mental outcome is to acknowledge that death is inevitable. Some of the
topics that will be discussed in chapter 3 include:
- End of Life Care
- Funeral Arrangements
- Wills and Living Wills
SENIOR'S HOUSING - Do you know the difference between a Retirement
Home and a Long Term Care Facility? How about Supportive Housing? We will
explore all of these different approaches to housing and provide links to government
services in every province across Canada to help to decide what is best for you and
provide the resources to help you find and secure that housing.
HEALTH CHALLENGES - According to statistics 89% of Men and 93% of
Women will experience at least one chronic condition throughout their life.
……the prevalence of selected chronic diseases for seniors. Since physical
health is closely associated with mental health, both must be taken care of in tandem and
that's why an entire chapter has been devoted to each issue.
PHYSICAL HEALTH - Prevalence of
selected chronic diseases for seniors, by sex, 2005 (Source: CANSIM data and CCHS data
analyzed by PHAC.). As you can plainly see,
chronic health problems are a definite issue for our Elders and we will discuss this
throughly in Chapter 2:
Men Women
Disability rates (Source: A Profile of Disability
in Canada, 2001 - this compete
Statistics Canada report can be seen when you Click Here) increase
with age, rising from 31% in those aged 65-74, to 53% in the 75+ age group (2001). The
overall disability rate for persons aged 65 and over is 40.5%. Disabilities most commonly
affect seniors in the following areas:
MENTAL HEALTH - Seniors view their mental health in
very positive terms. In 2005, 95% of seniors considered their mental health to be good,
very good or excellent, an increase of 1.5 percentage points over 2002. Although
these numbers seem good, that leaves almost 200,000 Seniors living in Canada stating that
there is a definite problem with their mental health and/or depression. We'll tackle
this issue in Chapter 3.
FINANCIAL HEALTH - Believe it or not
there were 137,000 seniors in 2003 who were eligible
for something called the Guaranteed Income Supplement but did not receive it! This figure represented 3% of the seniors’ population.
The value of these forgone supplements was estimated to be $204 million. These
seniors also forfeited all other benefits provided by provinces or territories that use
the status of GIS recipient as an eligibility criterion. You'll learn all about this
and much more when we discuss the Financial Health of Canadian Seniors in chapter 4.
These are just some of the issues that we will be covering in this book. It has
been written for two groups of people:
- Elders themselves - They are the fastest growing segment of the online community and
they are searching for resources to solve problems that they are encountering. Their
kids are grown up and have probably moved away as we are now a very mobile population.
- Baby Boomer Generation. We are all caught up in the hustle and bustle of today and
rarely have time for our immediate family let alone our extended family, and that extended
family includes aging parents that need care. We have to find answers to the
questions that we have in extending that care that is sometimes so desparately needed.
Resources for Resolution:
What we've learned so far is that there are warning signs to look for
and caregivers are YOU ... but what kind of care can you give ... where can you go to get
the resources that you need. You could be feeling alone right now but that is the
purpose of this book. You are not alone ... there are resources to help you.
This book is a comprehensive guide to those resources.
There are unlimited resources on the internet. If you Google
"Elder care" you will see that there are over 583,000 thousand pages indexed.
If you Google "Elder Care Canada" over 1,230,000 pages are retured.
How is the average person able to wade through that much information to find the
resources that they need to know!
That's what we have done with this guide. We have identified the
issues that are important to our Elders (and their care givers) and organized that
information into a comprehensive guide. And one of the neatest things to this guide is
that a lot of the "links" that are in this book are connected to live governemnt
websites ... meaning that as information is updated ... this book is automatically updated
... it is in fact a "live" resouce guide!
What we will do in the book is divide each chapter into 3 sections:
Definition - here we will define an
issue ...
The Issue - this section will examine the
issues in light of todays Elders
Resources for Resolution - here we will show you
the resources to help you resolve the Elder problems in your life. Most will be
hyperlinked so that as you read this book while online, you will be able to go right to
the resouces that we have sourced out for you.
We were nurtured when we were young and unable to look after ourselves.
We are now at that age where we can return that sense of nuturing to our elders in
their time of need. This book is intended to help you do that. It can be a
guide for both you and your elders. After all, elderly Canadians are the fastest
growing demographic online today.
What we will attempt to do in this book is identify the issues facing
our seniors today and supply you with the resouces to help you face these issues.