Siblings Canada

This webcast is a powerful conversation between Dr. Pamela Block from Western University and Helen Ries from Siblings Canada. They discuss the preliminary results of their study into sibling relationships and how they change over time, particularly as parents age and are no longer able to care. This study was supported by the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence.

The study has found that the sibling care relationships are diverse, dynamic, and can flow in many different ways.  

As part of this conversation we discuss: 

• Why and how this research is being conducted,  
• The concept of “worldmaking” and how siblings work together to create a meaningful life for themselves, 
• How siblings often step into the vacuum left by their parents when they pass away or are no longer able to care but they also step into the vacuum by a system that is not taking responsibility for supporting their citizens, 
• The decisions siblings are making related to housing for their brothers and sisters with disabilities and the impacts,
• Disability justice vs disability rights, and
• Home sharing as a housing option for people with disabilities. 

Project Resources and Influences 

Mia Mingus’s blogs Access is Love and Access Intimacy

The Future is Disabled and Care Work by Leah-Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Disability Visibility Access is Love by Mingus, Wong and Ho

Access Intimacy the Missing link

Dance Me To My Song

Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic, byLisa Stevenson

A Decolonial Crip Linguistics, by Suresh Canagarajah

Activist Affordances, by Arseli Dokumaci

Disability Worlds special issue of Current Anthropology

Alice Wong’s blog and her sisters’ support during her medical emergencies:

Zones of Social Abandonment by Vita Joao Biehl

Moral Laboratories by Cheryl Mattingly