An Evaluation of Canada's Compassionate Care Benefit from a Family Caregiver's Perspective at End of Life

Background: The goal of Canada's Compassionate Care Benefit (CCB) is to enable familymembers and other loved ones who are employed to take a temporary secured leave to care for aterminally ill individual at end of life. Successful applicants of the CCB can receive up to 55% of theiraverage insured earnings, up to a maximum of CDN$435 per week, over a six week period toprovide care for a gravely ill family member at risk of death within a six month period, as evidencedby a medical certificate. The goal of this study is to evaluate the CCB from the perspective of familycaregivers providing care to individuals at end of life. There are three specific research objectives.Meeting these objectives will address our study purpose which is to make policy-relevantrecommendations informed by the needs of Canadian family caregivers and input from other keystakeholders who shape program uptake. Being the first study that will capture family caregivers'experiences and perceptions of the CCB and gather contextual data with front-line palliative carepractitioners, employers, and human resources personnel, we will be in a unique position toprovide policy solutions/recommendations that will address concerns raised by numerousindividuals and organizations.Methods: We will achieve the research goal and objectives through employing utilization-focusedevaluation as our methodology, in-depth interviews and focus groups as our techniques of datacollection, and constant comparative as our technique of data analysis. Three respondent groupswill participate: (1) family caregivers who are providing or who have provided end of life care viaphone interview; (2) front-line palliative care practitioners via phone interview; and (3) humanresources personnel and employers via focus group. Each of these three groups has a stake in thesuccessful administration of the CCB. A watching brief of policy documents, grey literature, mediareports, and other relevant items will also be managed throughout data collection.Discussion: We propose to conduct this study over a three year period beginning in October,2006 and ending in October, 2009.