Home care 2012: Achievements, challenges, opportunities

This video clip comprises the Keynote Address: “Home care 2012: Achievements, challenges, opportunities” held at the 21st Annual John K. Friesen Conference, "Innovations in Home Care: A Public Policy Perspective," MAY 16-17, 2012, Vancouver, BC. Presented by Isobel Mackenzie, Chief Executive Officer, Beacon Community Services.It is well known that jurisdictions with more comprehensive and integrated home care delivery systems are able to extend independent living for older people for longer periods of time, thereby reducing more costly forms of care, such as institutionalization. Better quality home care raises the quality of life of older persons, and reduces the burden of care for families. Today, however, home care is provided in a largely fragmented system with many barriers to efficiency and coverage, such as divided responsibility and funding across ministries. There are issues of access in rural and remote areas, marginalized groups and concerning human resources. The 2012 John K. Friesen conference provided a forum for discussion of both the problems and the possibilities of home care in contemporary Canada.We also gratefully acknowledge a grant from the SFU Library's Scholarly Digitization Fund for videography and post-production editing.