Caregiver Heroes: Stories For Caregivers’ Highlights.

Stories For Caregivers is a social platform, created by the Vancouver-based Coup Company, that provides a support system for the millions of unpaid caregivers who have found themselves caring for someone they love and putting their own needs aside.

Through a myriad of educational resources, such as webinars and videos, the site bridges the gap that exists between caregivers and the guidance that is available to them, which, until now, has been hard to access.

One of the website’s special features are the three heart-warming video series that have been developed to highlight exceptional caregivers across the country and shed some light on the good they do.

The first is House Call, led by Vancouver-based Dr. Yvette Lu. This series follows Dr. Lu as she talks to caregivers across Canada and helps to find solutions for their everyday, but definitely not common, struggles. Each episode focuses on caregivers and care recipients with different relationships – husband and wife, son and mother, mother and daughter – and their varying needs – relationship management, self-care and time management.

Another series is Being There. Through the use of personal photos and commentary, filmmaker Mike Lang helps caregivers tell their own story – not necessarily just as a caregiver. To make this happen, Mike listens to each caregiver and their inspiring story and helps them tell a visual and moving story that is often then shared with family, friends and the community. In each of the Digital Stories created, the caregiver is the focus – something that rarely happens for these people – and helps to return a sense of self to each of them.

Finally, Caring For Those Who Care is a series that looks at very well-deserving caregivers across Canada and what they need. As we know, self-care is difficult when your attention is almost constantly on someone else. In this series, inspiring caregivers receive gifts tailored specifically for themselves, showing them that, while their job is to care for another, it is ok to accept care for themselves.

Over the next six months, we will be sharing these stories as a part of Caregiver Heroes. Month by month, we’ll learn about a caregiving inspiration and their stories. Our first installment will be Sue from Calgary. As a grandmother to 16 grandchildren, she talks about feeling the pain when a child or grandchild is sick and needs a caregiver.