Project Overview

Caring for a family member with a neurodevelopmental disability (NDD) can be challenging, often leading to high levels of anxiety and depression. To address this, our team of clinicians, scientists, caregivers, and trainees co-developed Caring for the Caregiver Acceptance and Commitment Training (CC-ACT), a group-based intervention. This intervention, co-led by trained caregivers and clinicians, helps caregivers develop skills to cope and improve their well-being. To date, we have successfully trained 80 caregivers and 100 clinicians from across Canada and shown how the program is helping families.
However, challenges remain to scaling up the intervention. Many under-served caregivers face barriers to accessing the intervention, including systemic inequities, language differences, and stigma. Additionally, long-term sustainability requires institutional support, such as funding and policy integration. To address these challenges, we will work with local teams to adapt the intervention to meet the needs of diverse, under-served caregivers (i.e., Black caregivers, father’s, neurodivergent caregivers, Francophone caregivers). We will also establish regional and national groups to support sustainable scale-up by facilitating regional collaborations, developing policy recommendations, enhancing a national training model, and supporting advocacy. This project will improve accessibility of CC-ACT, an evidence-based caregiver support intervention, and support its scale-up across Canada.

Principal Investigator

Johanna Lake , Center for Addiction and Mental Health and University Health Network

Team Members

Avra Selick, CAMH

Kenneth Fung, University Health Network

Yona Lunksy, Center for Addiction and Mental Health

Lee Steel, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Jodie Siu, BC Centrer for Ability/CAMH

Kendra Thomson, Brock University

Jonathan Weiss, York University

Claire de Oliveira, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Kayla Lauzon, Cdn Centre for Caregiving Excellence

Partners and Donors

Kids Brain Health Network

The Azrieli Foundation

BC Centre for Ability

Siblings Canada