Flag raised to honour start of caregiver appreciation month in Alberta

A flag was raised to mark the start of Foster and Kinship Caregiver month in Alberta on Oct. 1, 2025. (Dave Mitchell/CTV News Edmonton)

Foster and kinship caregivers were honoured with a flag-raising ceremony in downtown Edmonton on Wednesday.

The annual ceremony at the Queen Elizabeth II building marks the start of caregiver appreciation month, which is recognized in October each year in Alberta.

There are 2,100 kinship caregivers – children in the care of relatives – and 1,400 foster parents in the province, according to government officials.

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Carmen Legge, the acting president for the Alberta Foster and Kinship Association, said the flag-raising is an “important acknowledgement” but more is needed to support caregivers whose work she says is “24-hours-a-day, all year.”

“I don’t think we recognize how hard the work is for caregivers (and) some of the challenges that they overcome … supporting children who have experienced a lot of sometimes trauma (and) grief,” Legge told CTV News Edmonton after the ceremony.

“There needs to be an acknowledgement of the way this type of work impacts the caregiver – and not just the caregiver themselves – but their entire family.”

She said the province needs more caregivers and empty beds to help match kids with care that meets their needs – including location, community, school, friends, and cultural backgrounds.

“When your base of caregivers isn’t large enough to have empty homes, none of those things are able to be taken into consideration because the choice isn’t there,” Legge said, adding that caregivers need support through the entire process from the initial stages of curiosity and excitement to the later stages of grief, and even anger when things happen that are outside of the caregiver’s control.

More information about foster and kinship can be found on the Alberta government website.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Dave Mitchell