About the Family Caregiving Project
The Family Caregiving Project was created because we believe that families have perspectives and insights that need to be heard by policy-makers, educators, students, practitioners and other families who could learn from their experience.
This Project explored the perspectives of families affected by mental illness to better understand how to improve policies and services to meet their needs and to deepen understanding of family mental health realities, challenges and ways to help in recovery.
The three main phases of the Project included:
The Family Mental Health Cafés: a series of five community conversations were held across Ontario in 2018 & 2019 inviting family members to share their experiences and perspectives. For key Café highlights, please see our project Video Gallery and Café Tool kit.
The Family Caregiving Survey: An online survey was conducted between November 2019 and May 2020 asking individuals and members of families to share their insights.
Family Interviews: Online interviews were conducted with families across Ontario between May and December 2021, to gain a more personal and in-depth look at the family experience.
Please visit our Project Outputs & Reports page to review findings and outputs from all three phases of the project in our End-of-Project Report.
The Café Videos, Educational Materials, and other outputs of this project are relevant for families, educators, students, and healthcare providers and can be used in settings of all kinds to deepen understanding of the experiences of families facing issues related to mental health.
The project was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and funding from the Factor-Inwentash Chair in Health and Mental Health at the University of Toronto. The project received ethics approval at the University of Toronto (#34791).
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