Alberta Family Caregiver Strategy and Action Plan: Enhancing Integration Across Health and Social Care Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a provincial plan to better support unpaid caregivers in Alberta, aiming to improve their well-being and reduce strain on health and social care systems.

Contribution

The paper presents Alberta’s first evidence-based provincial strategy to integrate caregiver support into health and social care systems through co-design and stakeholder engagement.

Findings

Unpaid caregivers are critical to health system sustainability but remain under-supported.

The Alberta Family Caregiver Strategy includes eight priorities based on stakeholder input and thematic analysis.

Cross-sector consensus emphasizes the need for policy, education, and workplace supports to sustain caregiver inclusion.

Abstract

Public health relevance—How does this work relate to a public health issue?
Unpaid caregiving is a social determinant of health: caregiver well-being directly affects population health, system capacity, and the ability of older adults to remain safely at home.Across the evidence base, the primary precipitating factor for admission to hospital or long-term care is caregiver health breakdown or death, underscoring that sustaining caregiver well-being is a public health imperative.

Unpaid caregiving is a social determinant of health: caregiver well-being directly affects population health, system capacity, and the ability of older adults to remain safely at home.

Across the evidence base, the primary precipitating factor for admission to hospital or long-term care is caregiver health breakdown or death, underscoring that sustaining caregiver well-being is a public health imperative.

Public health significance—Why is this work of significance to public health?
This Strategy is one of the first to translate sound evidence, including that high-intensity caregiving is associated with poorer physical, mental, and economic outcomes, into an actionable provincial plan to prevent caregiver decline before crisis.By embedding triadic care, routine caregiver needs assessment, and integrated navigation, the Strategy addresses upstream drivers of hospitalization, institutionalization, and avoidable health system use.

This Strategy is one of the first to translate sound evidence, including that high-intensity caregiving is associated with poorer physical, mental, and economic outcomes, into an actionable provincial plan to prevent caregiver decline before crisis.

By embedding triadic care, routine caregiver needs assessment, and integrated navigation, the Strategy addresses upstream drivers of hospitalization, institutionalization, and avoidable health system use.

Public health implications—What are the key implications or messages for practitioners, policy makers and/or researchers in public health?
Practitioners and policymakers must treat caregiver identification, needs assessment, and partnership as core health care and safety practices, not optional add-ons; routine inclusion safeguards both caregivers’ health and the health of those they support.Researchers and policymakers should prioritize data systems, evaluation, and structural supports that reduce high-intensity caregiving burden—aligning with evidence that caregivers face inconsistent health outcomes, elevated financial strain, and major gaps in support.

Practitioners and policymakers must treat caregiver identification, needs assessment, and partnership as core health care and safety practices, not optional add-ons; routine inclusion safeguards both caregivers’ health and the health of those they support.

Researchers and policymakers should prioritize data systems, evaluation, and structural supports that reduce high-intensity caregiving burden—aligning with evidence that caregivers face inconsistent health outcomes, elevated financial strain, and major gaps in support.

Family caregivers provide up to 90% of care in Alberta’s communities and play an essential role in sustaining the province’s health and social care systems, yet they remain under-recognized and insufficiently supported. To address this gap, we co-designed the Alberta Family Caregiver Strategy and Action Plan (2024–2025), a provincial framework developed through participatory research and collective impact methods. Guided by principles of co-production, equity, and lived experience, the project engaged over 500 stakeholders, including caregivers, healthcare providers, educators, employers, and policymakers, through Phase 1 interviews (health/community leaders, n = 44; Family and Community Support Services (FCSS), n = 47; navigation experts, n = 9), Phase 2 co-design team consultations, and Phase 3 sector roundtables (n = 52). Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified four foundational caregiver strategies, Recognition, Partnership, Needs Assessment, and Navigation, and four enabling conditions: Education, Workplace Supports, Policy and Research and Data Infrastructure. These elements were synthesized into an eight-priority Alberta Caregiver Strategy and Action Plan Framework, a practical way to connect validated priorities with coordinated, measurable implementation across settings. Participants emphasized four key enablers essential to making caregiver inclusion more feasible and sustainable: education, workplace supports, policy infrastructure, and research and evaluation. Findings highlight strong cross-sector consensus that caregiver inclusion must be embedded into routine practice, supported by consistent policy, and reinforced through provincial coordination with local adaptation. The Alberta Family Caregiver Strategy provides a practical, evidence-informed plan for transforming fragmented supports into a coherent, caregiver-inclusive ecosystem that strengthens both caregiver well-being and system sustainability.

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