Setting up letter writing system



I saw this letter writing campaign on my Facebook feed today and I thought immediately about adapting something similar to work to implement system change to support unpaid family caregivers.

https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/take-action/support-kwakiutl

Let's use this method to set up a system for letter writing on behalf of unpaid family caregivers. If we don't speak for ourselves, our voices will not be heard. 

There is a labyrinth of government, non-government and for-profit organizational entities whose livelihood depends on the work of unpaid family caregivers. In the meantime, unpaid family caregivers remain invisible in terms of accountability, accurate cost assessment (financial, mental, emotional, physical), appropriate support mechanisms and impactful, pressure-relieving support.

We will need a list of provincial and federal elected representatives to receive these letters. We will need their addresses - snail mail and email.

Our strategy could be to send our letters to our elected representatives, and at the same time, broadcast publish these letters to our social media platforms. So we can encourage unpaid family caregivers and their extended families to amplify our message.

There are organizational entities that have been working for decades to change systems of support for unpaid family caregivers. For a multitude of reasons they have had little impact on actually changing the material forces that negatively impact the socio-economic vulnerabilities of this group. 

It is up to us to change the balance of power that has resulted in ongoing, exacerbating harms and deficiencies of care for the people who are delivering the majority of caregiving work in the Canadian healthcare system.

For example - Alberta's Home to Hospital to Home Transitions Guideline, which is dependent on unpaid family caregiving to provide support for care recipients once they get home, does not include unpaid family caregivers in their list of components for successful transition from home to hospital to home:

https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/hp/phc/if-hp-phc-phcin-hthth-guideline.pdf

This situation will not change without a concerted effort from those of us directly impacted by this erasure.

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