Peer support workers and health care providers along with their clients explore what advanced care planning means for people who face poverty, substance use and mental health issue
SYNOPSIS
The Challenge: Planning without tomorrow is a short documentary film about the struggle to plan for illness (advance care planning) in the context of a daily struggle for survival among individuals experiencing precarious housing or homelessness in Ottawa. Peer support workers, Robert Jamison and Catherine Hacksel, engage street-entrenched individuals by ‘meeting them where they’re at’ and providing compassionate care to community members and hospice patients, Judy, Joe and Stan. In a unique hospice created to care for people experiencing homelessness, Dr. Andrew Douglas offers meaningful medical care that is relevant to his patients’ needs, but not typical of mainstream healthcare providers. Although these conversations can be uncomfortable, or seem pointless in the context of a daily struggle to survive, this film shows how collaboration between healthcare providers and people with lived experience can offer a compassionate approach to advance care planning that respects individuals’ values and wishes in the face of critical illness
The Challenge
Planning Without Tomorrow
View the trailer
