Essential Care Partner Practices in Long-Term Care Homes 

This business case and evidence summary for long term care homes are useful tools to gain leadership support for developing an essential care partner program. 

This overview of leading practices for healthcare settings demonstrates the key components of caregiver inclusion in healthcare settings to ensure that caregivers are identified, included and supported to participate as part of the care team.

The Partnering with Caregivers in Long-Term Care – A How-To Guide for Essential Care Partner Programs, co-developed by The Ontario Centers for Learning, Research and Innovation in Long-Term Care at Bruyère Health, includes a step-by-step process to develop or improve an essential care partner program or grow a culture of caregiver inclusion in long-term care homes.

Education for long-term care teams helps staff to understand the caregiver role and learn how to include and communicate with caregivers. 

Contact the Support Hub team about tailored education sessions for your organization. 

​eLearning for healthcare providers – Learn from three free-of-charge 20-minute modules with practical, tangible tips for teams working with caregivers. 

Health Privacy and Consent Resources – These resources help providers better understand health privacy and consent rules when partnering with caregivers. 

Caregiving impacts the health, employment, finances, and personal relationships of caregivers. Caregiver well-being also impacts resident outcomes.  

How long-term care teams interact with caregivers can improve the caregiving experience. Team members are well positioned to connect caregivers to support. 

These tips for providers can help long-term care team members to identify caregivers.

Posters and postcards can be shared with caregivers to connect them directly to support. They are available in:

• English: poster, postcard
• French: poster, postcard
• Cantonese: poster, postcard
• Mandarin: poster, postcard
• Punjabi: poster, postcard
• Tagalog: poster, postcard
• Tamil: poster, postcard

This document offers simple strategies to support caregiver well-being in long-term care homes, including common challenges caregivers face in Ontario and potential interventions you can start with.

Use this document to support caregivers from rural and remote communities.

Team members can also refer caregivers to the Ontario Caregiver Helpline  

Overview of OCO programs and services for caregivers – One page overview for healthcare providers to give to caregivers. 

eLearning for caregivers – Explore valuable e-learning modules for caregivers to learn how to best communicate with care providers.

Caregiver Identification (ID) is any form of official identification (i.e., card, badge, button) issued by a healthcare organization to a caregiver. 

Get our Caregiver ID badge template and “I am a caregiver” heart. 

Caregiver Identification (ID)* is a tool that can be used to facilitate the inclusion and meaningful participation of family caregivers in care settings. 

The benefits of using Caregiver ID include: 

• Tangible way to show organizational commitment to caregivers 
• Enhanced caregiver experience and empowered essential care partners 
• Better team awareness of the role and importance of essential care partners 
• Greater mutual trust and dialogue between caregivers and long-term care teams 
• Enriched resident care 

* Adapted from materials originally created by The Change Foundation