In an effort to understand the challenges caregivers face every day, as well as expand their support systems, the University of Saskatchewan partnered with the Saskatoon Council on Aging to conduct a survey.

Steven Hall, a registered nurse and one of the online survey’s creators, says it reached 355 caregivers in diverse communities across the province.

“The survey had three different questions. The first question was ‘what is most challenging about being a caregiver?’ The second was ‘what are the positive aspects of your caregiving role?’, and the third question was ‘what are your priorities for support?'”

Hall says although participants did have positive things to say about their career, the main challenges revealed by the survey were exhaustion, a lack of balance between work and a personal life, and hard-to-navigate the health care and social service systems.

“We are planning our next moves to approach people in governmental positions to share the findings. We have quite a big sample size of people who shared their stories. With 355 participants in the study, we were able to gather over 40,000 words of written data.”

He adds that this survey is the first of its kind to take place in Canada, that he knows of.

He adds that the Saskatoon Council on Aging has already used these findings to improve the services offered at their Caregiver Support Centre, ran by registered social workers, and located inside the Saskatoon Fieldhouse. Emotional and informational support can be accessed through toll free at 1-888-652-4411. After the survey’s findings are shared with policy makers, Hall hopes that Saskatoon’s Caregiver Support Centre can be expanded to serve caregivers province-wide.