What is the Senior Friendly Caregiver Education Project?
To address the growing need for educational supports for family and friend caregivers, the RGPO launched the Senior Friendly Caregiver Education Project in 2018.
Funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and working in collaboration with caregivers and healthcare providers across Ontario, the goal of the project was to design educational resources that address the diverse learning needs of caregivers who provide care and support for seniors living with frailty.
The result of this project is Caregiving Strategies, a collection of free educational resources that have been developed and/or curated for family and friend caregivers who provide care and support for seniors experiencing frailty.
Caregiving Strategies resources include:
- The Caregiving Strategies website
- The Caregiving Strategies Handbook
- The Caregiving Strategies online course
Organized into eight topics, the Caregiving Strategies resources provide
- Strategies and tools to support caregiving.
- Tips for how to communicate with professionals.
- Links to helpful resources.
To view and download the Caregiving Strategies resources, please visit rgpson.mydev.ca/caregiving-strategies.
Who Did We Hear From?
To ensure the resources reflect the learning needs of caregivers, we held facilitated focus group sessions with caregivers in 10 communities across Ontario. These sessions were conducted with the help of 78 trusted and skilled interprofessionals from the local RGPs for each area.
We listened to 133 caregivers as they responded to our questions, told their stories, and shared their caregiving experiences.
The facilitated focus group sessions were held in the following 10 communities:
- Peterborough
- Cobourg
- Orillia
- Kingston
- London
- Oshawa
- Hamilton
- Ottawa
- Waterloo
- Thunder Bay
For more information about the co-design methodology used and the results of these facilitated sessions, please refer to our report What We Heard from Caregivers Across Ontario.