Enhancing Care, Enhancing Life: Improving the family voice in Family Council
by Family Councils Ontario
This is part 2 in our series of posts on the Change Foundation Resident Councils and Family Councils Project report.
Enhancing Care, Enhancing Life by the Change Foundations on the Long-Term Care Councils Project has shed light on what families think of the role, impact and functioning of Family Councils. The sub-report Family Member Views of Family Councils in Ontario Long-Term Care Homes, discusses perceptions of the Council’s relationship with the Home (72% of family members believe that the council’s relationship with the Home is a positive one), relationship between the Family Council and the Residents’ Council (76% thought the relationship is a positive one), family members’ perceptions of their voice through the Family Council (67% said they do have a voice through the Family Council), and many more positive views. However, there are views reported that highlight areas for improvement.
Family Council provides an opportunity for families to gather together to share their concerns, ideas, and perspectives to work together for positive change. While 67% of family member respondents said they have a voice through the Council, 8% said that they do not. Specifically, the report says that “those who felt they do not have a voice said the Family Council was not rotating its membership or its executive.” As well, the report give as a reason for families saying that they do not have a voice that “in larger homes in particular, family members noted that certain units had specific problems and they felt the council was not addressing the differences in these units.” While Family Council may not always be able to fully represent the views and opinions of all family members at all times, Changing Care, Changing Life highlights the importance of Councils making ongoing, concerted efforts to reach out to families and bring in new perspectives and voices. The strength of a Family Council lies in its ability to connect with and support families and work together as a team.
These findings indicate there is room for improvement in reaching out to all families and finding creativity in approaches to outreach, recruitment and organization. You can use these results to survey your Home’s families (you can adapt a Family Interest Survey for this purpose) to determine if their views are consistent with these results, and if families feel they have a voice. Consider different ways to gather the opinions and view of family members. Can you renew your efforts to recruit new members? Are there ways to open ongoing communication channels with families who do not attend your meetings? Do you need to do targeted outreach to certain areas of the Home? Use these results to improve your efforts and raise your voices together to create positive change.
Even in the most effective, well-run Councils there is room for improvement. Enhancing Care, Enhancing Life highlights the important, impactful work Family Councils do to support their members and improve quality of life for residents. It also highlights ways we can better do that work. Use these results as a starting point enhancing your Council’s efforts. Together, your Council can do great things and now is a good time look at ways to further improve those great things.