Grant: Operating Grant

The home palliative care environment is labour intensive and characterized by physical and emotional strain, where the caregiving demands can be enormous. With an aging population and increased emphasis on home-based care, the dependence on family members to provide care will continue to propagate. Many caregivers miss time from the labour force because of their intense caregiving responsibilities. While family caregivers assume most of the responsibility, there is a paucity of research that has comprehensively assessed this responsibility and how it affects economic and health outcomes. Understanding the predictors of labour force participation (LFP) may inform the targeting of services to those families for whom interventions to support their status may be more effective. A greater appreciation of the differences in caregiving intensity for those who participate in the labour force and those who do not as well as the factors which predict participation are necessary for practitioners, health managers, and policy decision makers to ensure that families receive efficient care. There are three main purposes to this study: 1) to identify the effect of unpaid caregiving on caregivers' LFP, across the palliative care trajectory; 2) to assess demographic, health, and caregiving factors that influence caregivers' LFP; and 3) to assess demographic and caregiving factors that influence caregivers' quality of life, over the palliative care trajectory. Caregivers will be recruited from two palliative care programs: Toronto and Niagara. Participants will be asked to provide information on their LFP, health status, and quality of life, in biweekly interviews from admission until death. All other required data will be obtained from regional databases maintained by the palliative programs. This study will be relevant to policy makers, interested in reconfiguring the health and labour systems to address the needs of palliative care patients and their families.