Members of your staff and/or community may be interested in participating in this upcoming webinar. An estimated four million Canadians act as unpaid or informal caregivers to seniors and persons with disabilities.

Join Sherri Torjman, Vice-President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy on Thursday, June 3, 12:00-1:00 to discuss expanding Employment Insurance, extending Canada Pension Plan (CPP) provisions, making tax credits refundable, and other ideas to provide financial and other supports to caregivers.

For more information on the topic, see Maytree Policy in Focus. RSVP to: policyinfocus@maytree.com

To: Members, Neurological Health Charities Canada

The MS Society of Canada has been working with Judy Wasylycia-Leis, MP for Winnipeg North, on a private member’s bill to expand a tax credit for caregivers to spouses that would ease some of the financial pressure they face on a daily basis. On Thursday, April 8, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, MP for Winnipeg North, announced a private members’ bill in support of allowing spouses to claim the Caregiver Amount. The announcement took place in the home of Lynne and Wayne Waterman in Winnipeg. Lynne has been her husband’s caregiver since his diagnosis of MS 30 years ago. He had to stop working a few years later.

Many thanks to the Parkinson Society and the Alzheimer Society for participating in the event in Winnipeg. It made a significant difference to be able to demonstrate that this is an issue that affects many people with chronic conditions and their families. News media in attendance included CBC radio and TV, Radio Canada, CTV, CITYTV and the Winnipeg Sun. The Winnipeg Free Press participated via phone interviews. Please see the attached news release for more details.

The MS Society will continue pushing for action for this issue when government relations volunteers and staff meet with MPs the first week of May.

Links to caregiver news conference coverage
Winnipeg Free Press
CBC
Yahoo Canada News
Winnipeg Sun
Sympatico News

WINNIPEG – New Democrat Health Critic Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North) today launched a bill to bolster the family income of persons living with disabilities by extending the ‘caregiver tax credit’ to the spouses of persons with disabilities.

“This will ease some of the pressure on the spouses of persons living with disabilities who, up until now, have not been eligible to claim the caregiver tax credit,” says Wasylycia-Leis. “Spouses, in particular, are stretched and stressed from the pressure to provide their loved ones the time, care and financial support they need and deserve. Yet no one is caring for the caregivers.”

A quarter of Canadians provide informal care to a family member or friend with a serious health problem every year. More than 75 percent of these caregivers are women. A 2009 study estimates the costs in personnel alone to fulfill the care provided by these family caregivers at $25 billion. Without the needed supports, one third of caregivers have run up added expenses, 20 percent have lost at least one month’s work and 15 percent have had to cut back on hours of work.

“Sooner or later, we’re all called on to help in some way and with the approaching wave of aging baby-boomers, we can’t continue to ignore the needs of family caregivers,” says Wasylycia-Leis. “It’s been almost a decade since the Canadian Caregiver Coalition identified a national home and community care program as caregivers’ top priority. The problem is it’s not a government priority.”

A lack of financial security is the number one hurdle facing persons with disabilities and their families. Those living with disabilities are twice as likely to live in poverty as other Canadians, yet strategies leading toward self-sufficiency and independence are a low government priority. So too are measures to support caregivers both economically and psychologically.

“The MS Society of Canada congratulates Judy Wasylycia-Leis for her leadership in launching this private member’s bill to allow spouses access to the caregiver tax credit” says Deanna Groetzinger, vice-president, government relations and policy for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. “It is an issue for which the MS Society has been advocating for several years. Spouses are the ones who most often provide care and should be recognized. Several provincial governments have initiated caregiver tax credits or allowances, and we urge the federal government to follow their lead.”

Wasylycia-Leis also has proposals before Parliament calling on the government to:
- make the Disability Tax Credit fully refundable for persons with disabilities; and
- adjust the qualifying requirements of the Canada Pension Plan – Disability provisions to accommodate the variable and, in some cases, degenerative characteristics of chronic diseases.

Wasylycia-Leis announced her bill today at the home of Lynn and Wayne Waterman, one couple of the many who would benefit from its passage. They were joined by representatives of the MS Society of Canada, the Parkinson Society (Manitoba) and Alzheimer Society of Manitoba. Also supporting the extension of the caregiver tax credit to spouses are Tourette Canada, Epilepsy Ontario and the Canadian Working Group on HIV and Rehabilitation.

For more information:
Jim Thompson,
Office of Judy Wasylycia-Leis, (204) 984-1769
and
Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada
Darell Hominuk
Director, Client Services and Government Relations
Manitoba Division ((204) 988-0907)

You are entitled to help. To financial assistance. To more resources.

For more information, visit NotSuperHeroes.com

Visit our Facebook page and let us know you’ll be there.

We are a research group based at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. We are interested in how family members cope when a relative has had a brain injury, such as a head injury or a stroke. One of our interests relates to the expectations family members have for the recovery of their relative.

To look at this issue properly, we need to develop a questionnaire that assesses the expectations of the family member. We have developed a first version on the basis of a previous study we did about expectations; direct consultation with some family carers; and an existing questionnaire. We now need to evaluate this version of the questionnaire by getting a large number of family members to fill it in.

We would be very grateful if you could take some time to complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire is quite long, but your answers will help us to improve the questionnaire by, for example, reducing its length.

The questionnaire is meant for people who have (or expect to have in the future) a significant caring role for a family member who has had a brain injury within the last 12 months. If you do not fall into this category, thank you for your time but please do not submit your answers to us.

Please be assured that your confidentiality is guaranteed. We will not ask you to give your name or any other details that might make it easy to identify you. No one but ourselves will see the individual answers that you give. Because we won’t ask for your name, we will be unable to identify the person who has given these answers.

If you do not feel happy about answering the questions, please do not continue with the survey.

If the questionnaire raises concerns for you, you may contact your local Headway, Stroke Association or other similar organization, who should be able to address these concerns. You may also contact us, Andrew Brennan and Gerry Riley, Clinical Psychologists, via email at Andrew.Brennan@sbpct.nhs.uk or G.A.Riley@bham.ac.uk. We would also welcome your views if you have any general observations about the questionnaire.

If you would like a summary of the final research report, please send us an e-mail to request this.

Survey Link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=BAkQOkS8ILAgJBrWBfT_2few_3d_3d

Dr. Andrew Brennan, Clinical Psychologist
Tel 0121 442 3448/3303