Unmet Needs

<p>In <em>Unmet Needs</em>, the twelfth episode of StorefrontTV Season 3, Melanie Gilligan addresses the context of commodified and informal care for aging people in Ontario, Canada. Through conversations with a researcher and a care worker, she considers multiple types of caregiving relationships, investigating manifestations of intimacy, value of labor, agency, and access. <em>Unmet Needs</em> is a timely portrayal of the crucial relationships that maintain the physical and emotional health of one of society’s most vulnerable demographic groups.</p> <p><em>Care is labour and dignity, formal and informal, skilled and intimate, systemic and individual, unequally distributed and accessed, racialized and feminized, essential and undervalued, the maintenance of our relationships. Meeting with a person who researches health equity and social determinants of health, I learn that in Ontario, Canada, aging immigrants do not receive adequate support for their health and well-being. Meeting with a person who works in retirement living and long-term care, I hear what it is like to give support to older people. It becomes clear that care work is often given by people who should be paid much more, and some who are not paid at all. Despite this context, through the work of caring for older people, important relationships are built and sustained. —Melanie Gilligan</em></p>