Family Caregivers of BC has ongoing support available for caregivers. According to their website, they provide “direct support to caregivers through one-on-one emotional support, caregiver support groups, health care system navigation, and free educational resources.”
Access information, self-assessment resources, and help here
You can also call the BC Caregiver Support Line (toll-free: 1-877-520-3267) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:30 am – 4:00 pm, and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 am – 7:00 pm.
Hey everyone, it’s the first week of CAREGIVERS month here on our blog. Though we post here a lot about caregiving and for caregivers, we thought it would be a great time to take a step back and to remind ourselves of what caregiving looks like.
Here’s A Day in the Life of a Caregiver…caregivers, this might not be exactly how your own day looks, but its our way of saying: we see you, we value you, and we appreciate all you do!
THANK YOU to all our caregivers for showing up for those they care for, day-in and day-out.
Hey everyone, we’re focusing our posts on CAREGIVERS this month. We know that one of the challenges faced by many caregivers is…connecting with other caregivers, and connecting those they care for with others.
So…here is a great resource!
The Family Support Institute of BC offers their Calendar for Connection, as well as several other, each month. We’ve posted their events before, but we wanted to make sure you’d heard about ALL their calendars!
Hey everyone, we’ve been posting a series to celebrate Community Inclusion Month. We have talked about where we’ve been, and about some current issues where we areand how to self-advocate. And so, as we end Community Inclusion Month, we wanted to leave you with some thoughts about where we’re going.
While it’s impossible to know the future, our hope for where we’re going is described best by Cole Blakeway: We are all DIFFERENT, and that’s AWESOME!
A really important part of self advocacy is standing up for your own rights. We have a whole page that talks about rights and responsibilities here, complete with help to understand different kinds of rights, like:
Everyone has rights as a person in Canada, and rights as a person in BC. If you have a disability and you are getting supports, you also have rights as a person who uses the services of Community Living BC (CLBC).
With all those different kinds of rights in mind, we thought this would be a good time to remind ourselves about this awesome conversation that helped explore rights and responsibilities:
If you’ve got questions about rights and responsibilities, please let us know or leave us a comment.
Hey everyone, October 24-31 is PRIDE WEEK in Kelowna, and there are a whole bunch of events going on to celebrate 25 Years of Kelowna Pride! You can check it all out here, including the bike derby, trans and non-binary storytelling evening and social, pride festival and pride cabaret.
You can find Kelowna Pride Society on Instagram at the link below, on Facebook here, and you can read about Pride Week on KelownaNow.
Hey everyone, we’ve been posting a series as part of Community Inclusion Month. Last week, we talked about where we’ve been in terms of disability rights and inclusion, and the work done by self-advocates who have brought the movement to where we are now. This week, we’re focusing on where we are by exploring some current issues and resources for self-advocacy.
Here is a news article from CTV News about a young man from Toronto who is part of the Dear Everybody campaign put on each year by a rehabilitation hospital. He (and a team of young people with disabilities) are doing a virtual tour of classrooms and workplaces to talk about ableism.
What’s ableism?
Here’s how the Dear Everybody website explains it: Ableism is the discrimination towards someone based on their abilities, often favouring those who do not have a disability and seeing less value in those that do. And it needs to stop.
The idea is to get people talking about ableism, in order to end it — and that’s where self-advocates come in! Self-advocates can start great conversations about what’s wrong and how to fix it. You can see the videos made to start the Dear Everybody conversation here.
The Easter Seals website has a great idea on this page that would help start important conversations (like Shelley’s interview and like Dear Everybody). You can invite people you know to watch TED Talks about different disability issues, different people’s perspectives, and different experiences, and the then start a conversation about it, or a video chat, or have a talk on the phone. Or, if you’re interested in exploring another way to safely try out online community, you could post on the video page, a message board, or Facebook page, or post a comment below!
Check out the Easter Seals 10 suggested TED Talks about disability, accessibility, and inclusion to get started (printable list below).
