Our Role

CHAA’s role in leading the dialogue

Contracted operators are both privileged and challenged to meet the lofty expectations of aging Albertans. There is so much we can do together to make transformational change a reality.

CHAA operators are well-positioned to lead the way with our values, mission, and decades-long experience as not-for-profit providers. We boast an 80-year history of providing values-based, holistic health and healing to vulnerable Albertans. Our legacy of caring for the province’s most elderly, ill, marginalized and vulnerable citizens has remained one of the greatest privileges of our faith-based member organizations.

Seniors hands holding child hands

Our Approach

Resourceful, innovative 
and patient-centered

With roots dating back to a time before publicly funded health care services were available in Alberta, our mission-driven teams learned how to be resourceful, innovative, and frugal – yet holistic and patient-centered – in our approach to delivering services to those most in need.

We have decades of experience operating between 25% and 45% of all care spaces for seniors, depending on the stream of care. This wealth of experience has yielded countless lessons learned about the effectiveness of current policies and the need for changes in the way our healthcare system works for seniors, their families, and unpaid caregivers.

Senior couple holding hands

We have a whole-system lens

CHAA has a unique perspective on strengthening the continuing care sector. Why? Because our operators have worked in every stream of the health care system. We understand acute care (hospitals), palliative care, home care, mental health care, community care, and subsidized housing.

That's why we never recommend a change in one part of the system until we've thought through the spin-off effects elsewhere in the system. This upstream-downstream lens means the solutions we propose are usually high potential ideas. But because they affect multiple parts of the system, our solution ideas can also involve messy change involving lots of stakeholders. Bringing all these varying interests together is what we do best.

Here's how we view the continuing care and health care systems ... and how they can be better integrated and aligned to deliver the best possible care.

Areas of Focus

Our advocacy focus is in five key areas

CHAA is a sector leader for system transformation, using research and collaboration to guide policy change.