Adoption Beyond Infancy
February 16, 2016
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
Jane De Pauw lives in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada, with her husband and two children who were adopted through the Alberta foster care system. Sylvie Hebert was born in Buckingham, Quebec, Canada. She and her husband started their own family and then set up their own medical foster home. They explain the Adoption Society of Alberta, http://www.adoptionabi.com, and the support it provides for parents who have adopted children. They discuss the experience of adoptive parents. They highlight what they each see as the challenges faced by parents when the children they have adopted have special needs related to mental health disabilities and physical health. They explain the ways the Adoption Society’s support helps overcome the challenges with disabilities such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder who are living at home and when they also are at school. They say what more they both would like to do and see done to promote the Adoption Society of Alberta.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
Episode Directory
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
- 2/23/2016: How Class Action Lawsuits are Organized Listen Now
- 2/16/2016: Adoption Beyond Infancy Listen Now
- 2/9/2016: UnitedHealthcare Resources for Family Caregivers caring for Aging or Disabled Family Members Listen Now
- 2/2/2016: Challenges for School Children of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Listen Now
