Quebec grants an additional $6 million per year to community organizations that help caregivers.
These people need support and psychosocial support that organizations can provide.
A caregiver is a person who comes to the aid of another person who “needs support”, summed up in an interview CAQ MP Marilyne Picard, who is parliamentary assistant to the minister responsible for seniors and minister responsible for health.
This can be as much a caregiver who supports a person who suffers from mental health problems as a parent who helps his child with a disability, or a parent who takes care of his young person who suffers from an intellectual disability, continued the Minister for Health, Sonia Bélanger.
This recurring funding will be paid in all regions of Quebec to community organizations that already receive funding from the Ministry of Health and Social Services.
Broadly speaking, they will thus be able to intervene through psychosocial support for the caregiver, which stands out from the role of respite organizations that come to take over, for example in the work of helping the person who needs support, specified Ms.me Belanger.
Organizations will thus be able to assess needs, put people in contact with other people who experience the same realities or with other organizations.
“It also helps to break the isolation,” explained the minister delegate.
“When you’re a caregiver, it’s very demanding. Often, caregivers will isolate themselves, will also forget themselves. And these organizations really have a role in terms of social integration, psychosocial support. »
They can also give training, tips to speakers, create discussion groups, she continued.
Quebec has already set aside $200 million for the Caregiver Action Plan.
According to government statistics, in 2018, approximately one in five people aged 15 and over in Quebec was a caregiver, or 1.5 million people.
But their number is probably much higher, because many people do not know that they are caregivers or are not even aware of it, because “it has always been in their habits, in their values, in their personality” , estimated Mme Belanger.