I can speak to that briefly.

Within the palliative care world, we're starting to move forward with something that's becoming more of an international phenomenon, although it's based on work done by Allan Kellehear from Ottawa, called “compassionate communities”. Its focus has been looking more at people with terminal illnesses, and when we're dealing with dementias, we're dealing with incurable, life-limiting illnesses. I think that's something that needs to be promoted more, and not only with volunteers in the official capacity. With all palliative care programs, there are generally volunteer components through hospices and such, but it's also linking with community businesses. We're starting to have businesses approach our local hospice and say they're already faced with this. They often have people within their companies who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, or they have caregivers, and they need to know as a business how to support these people best. These are wonderful employees, and they want to enable them to do what they need to do, while keeping them healthy so the companies can get a return on their investment and have them come back.

It's wonderful to see the business communities reaching out to us to ask for that. We're starting to do more education with businesses, a lot of different organizations, to help them understand this and how they can be part of it. It's a wonderful initiative, and there are some areas around the country that have already taken this on, and some towns and cities that have been labelled as compassionate cities and towns. It's something that we as a society need to try to continue to push forward.

You've heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, we can't stop raising that child when they become 18. Lifetime is from beginning to end, and we need to support people right through as a village rather than as individuals. That's something that doesn't really need to cost us a lot of money. It's just getting our society back on track and starting to recognize that there's a lot of value in becoming a volunteer and becoming a provider to help with this.

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